


It all started with strawberry ice cream

by SweetAliss



Category: Bandom, Panic! at the Disco
Genre: Child Abuse, F/M, First Kiss, First Time, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Recreational Drug Use, Underage Drug Use, Underage Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-11
Updated: 2013-09-11
Packaged: 2017-12-26 07:24:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/963199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SweetAliss/pseuds/SweetAliss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dylan moved to Summerlin when she was seven.  The next week, she met Ryan Ross and they shared an ice cream cone.  That strawberry ice cream would be the basis for the greatest friendship either of them would ever have.  The years start to go by, and as they grow up they start to think of each other in slightly different ways...</p>
            </blockquote>





	It all started with strawberry ice cream

**Author's Note:**

> This is unbeta'd and edited only by myself and Spellcheck. All errors are my own.  
> The only part of this I own is my heroine, Dylan, and the storyline. Not much is based on actual facts, except the general sequence of events surrounding P!AtD being sighed and getting started. I took certain liberties as well, such as putting Spencer in the same grade as Ryan. And Brendon and Jon going to the same school as everyone else...this is a little bit AU I suppose.

One night, not long after Ryan’s fourteenth birthday, he sneaks into Dylan’s room after she falls asleep. He whispers her name and she wakes up, groggy and disoriented until she sees him standing at the foot of her bed. She switches on the lamp on her nightstand and sees him clearly. He’s crying and bleeding from a cut high on his cheekbone. She holds out her arms to him and his shoulders slump in relief, the way they always do when she offers to comfort him. Even after all these years, when she’s never once rejected him, never told him to leave when he needed her, he still holds his breath in fear of her turning him away, the way everyone else has done. It breaks her heart every time she sees that fear, and she resolves that one day, it won’t be there. 

He crosses the room quickly and is in her arms just a second later, sobbing into her t-shirt while she strokes his hair. It’s a gesture that always comforts him, one that she learned years ago. She doesn’t ask what happened and he doesn’t tell her. She can sense, by now, when he wants to talk about it, and when he just wants to be held, and she knows this time is the latter. 

When he’s cried himself out and relaxed in her arms, he pulls away gently and goes to the bathroom to wash his face. She follows him, and when he’s done she dabs his cheek with a q-tip dipped in peroxide and puts a Band-Aid on it. Then she kisses it, the way she’s been doing since they were seven and that was the only way she knew to make it better, and leads him by the hand back into her bedroom. She crawls under the covers and holds them up while he slips off his shirt and shorts and lies down next to her in his boxers. She wraps her arms around him again and he tucks his head under her chin, his messy hair tickling her lips. Moments later they’re both asleep. Neither of them has said a word since he showed up in her bedroom.

She wakes up facing the door with Ryan spooned behind her, his arm slung low across her belly. The bedside clock tells her it’s 6:34. She always wakes up at this time, almost to the minute, every day, because her alarm for school goes off at 6:45 and she hates the sound, so she has unconsciously trained herself to wake up and shut it off preemptively. She checks to make sure it’s off and nestles back into her pillow, smiling because it’s Saturday and she can sleep another couple of hours.

That’s when she feels it, and holy shit how could she ever have missed it? She’d noticed Ryan’s body heat behind her, his arm thrown across her body, but somehow she’d missed his hard-on pressed up against her ass. It’s nestled a little into the crack of her ass, hot and hard through the soft material of her panties where her oversized t-shirt has ridden up around her hips. And that’s not all. He’s moving against her, rocking his hips steadily, rubbing himself against her. She already knew he was big, bigger than big (not that she has anything to compare to, other than the porno magazines Tim’s shown her, but there are a lot of dicks in those magazines, and Ryan has at least half of them beat). But wow, feeling him pressed up against her, moving like that, through just the two thin layers of their underwear…it’s much more obvious like this.

She knows he can’t possibly be awake, that he would never do anything like this when he was awake, but she turns her head slowly, enough to see his face out of the corner of her eye. He’s definitely asleep, but his forehead is creased and his lips are parted and there’s a little flush high up in his cheeks. He’s breathing heavily, making these little sounds on every exhale, and she can feel herself getting wet. She bites her lip and turns her face away again, squeezing her eyes shut. She clenches her hands in the sheets to keep from reaching down between her legs and pushes her ass back against him, giving him more friction.

A minute later, his hips start moving faster, the little sounds louder in her ear. She thinks she knows what that means, can relate it to the way she feels before she comes, with her fingers moving fast over her clit or the steady massaging pressure of the showerhead. Ryan’s arm tightens around her, long fingers splayed over her belly.

She feels the instant he wakes up. It’s not a gradual slipping into consciousness, the light streaming in through the window on your face; it’s the immediate alertness from a thunderclap right above your house or someone pounding on your door. He stops breathing, stops making those noises, his body tensing behind her. He knows exactly what’s happening, but he doesn’t know she’s awake. She makes herself relax, hold completely still.

“Oh, shit,” he breathes in her ear. He pulls his hips back, shaking with the effort to restrain himself, and holds his breath. He squeezes his thighs together, trying to hold back, willing his body not to come. And then, “oh, shit,” he says again, desperate, helpless. He presses forward once more, rubbing fast against her ass, his hand holding her in place. His breath hitches and he lets out that long moan she remembers so well, low but unmistakable, and then she feels the hot wetness soaking through the thin fabric of her panties as he spills over her ass. His hips keep moving for a couple more seconds, twitching, and then his whole body is still, and he’s panting in her ear.

She’s trying so hard not to move, to feign sleep, but her pussy is throbbing, dripping wet. It’s almost a relief when she feels his arm retracting slowly, feels him gingerly roll over and climb out of bed, even though she starts to feel cool and sticky on the back of her panties. He goes to her dresser and opens the drawer that’s been designated Ryan’s Drawer since he started sleeping over at her house, pulls out a clean pair of boxers. Then he tiptoes out of the room, opening and closing the door as quietly as he can, knowing exactly how far he can open it before the hinges squeak. As soon as she hears the bathroom door close, she rolls onto her stomach and shoves a hand down her panties, moaning at the relief when she finally touches herself. It’s a matter of seconds before she comes, hard, and as soon as she’s done she reaches into the bottom drawer of her nightstand and pulls out a clean pair of panties, changing under the covers. She reaches up over her head, stuffing the dirty panties between the mattress and the wall to hide the evidence, thinking she’ll do laundry later, after Ryan leaves.

She hears the toilet flush and her doorknob turns a few seconds later. She shuts her eyes and pretends to be asleep again, wondering what he did with the boxers he took off. Ryan stands just inside the room for a few seconds, staring at her, before he goes around the bed and pulls the covers back. She doesn’t understand why his breath catches in his throat, or the little whispered “shit” at first, but then she realizes that he can see her clean panties, devoid of the stain he left there minutes before. Also, she’s pretty sure they’re a different color.

Slowly, he slides in behind her, lying on his back, far away that he’s not touching her at all. He’s silent for what feels like a really long time.

“DeeDee?” he whispers, his voice unsure.

She doesn’t know if she should answer or keep pretending to be asleep. But after a minute she whispers back, “Yeah?”

“Um. Are you…okay?” Meaning, are we okay?

She nods. “Are you?”

She can feel him nod, even though he’s behind her. “Yeah.”

They’re quiet for another minute. Then, “Ry?”

“Yeah?”

“My back’s cold.”

He chuckles softly, relief evident in it, and rolls over to press his body along her back, his arm sliding around her waist. She lays her hand on top of his, slipping her fingers between his, and he kisses the back of her neck, smiling with relief against her skin.  
A few minutes later, they’re asleep again. When they wake up, they eat the waffles Dylan’s mom made and watch Saturday morning cartoons, then play video games for most of the afternoon.

***

Dylan moved to Summerlin with her mother and older brother, Tim, when she was six. Before that they had lived on a commune in Arizona, where Dylan was born. Her father had died of cancer when she was a baby; she only knew him through pictures and stories told to her by her family. A couple years after he died, her mom started seeing a woman named Sunny who lived on the commune, and they lived together for the next four years. When Sunny fell in love with a man in the commune and moved out, Dylan’s mother couldn’t stand the thought of seeing them together and left with her two youngest children. Dylan’s oldest brother, John, was twenty-one by that time and had moved to San Francisco.

Dylan’s full name was Dorothy Dylan Waters, but everyone called her Dylan – except her brother Tim, who sometimes called her Dee. Her mother had named Dylan after her favorite author, Dorothy Parker, and singer, Bob Dylan. Grace used to tell her that she had met Dylan’s father at a Bob Dylan concert when they were seventeen, and they fell in love dancing to “Lay Lady Lay”.  
The week after she moved to Summerlin, Dylan met Ryan Ross at the park down the street. He was with his mother, who was lost in a haze of Valium and fashion magazines and didn’t notice Ryan chasing pigeons across the park and into the street. Dylan pulled him out of the path of a car and scolded him for not looking both ways. When he cried, she shared her strawberry ice cream with him.

That ice cream cone was the foundation of the closest friendship either of them would ever have.

***

Ryan’s mother left the year after Dylan met him. She told him that his father didn’t care about her, but Ryan couldn’t understand why she left him behind, since he was pretty sure his father didn’t care about him either. George screamed at Ryan for hours after she walked out that door, told him a lot of things that he couldn’t understand until years later. The only part he understood was that it was his fault that his mom left, that she had never loved Ryan and now he had ruined all of their lives. Then he locked himself in his bedroom and didn’t come out for days. 

When Ryan missed school the next day, Dylan came to see if he was sick. His face was stained and puffy from crying and the only thing he had eaten was cereal that he’d climbed up on a kitchen chair to reach. Dylan hugged him in the doorway for a long time, and then took his hand and pulled him down the block to her house. Grace cleaned him up and fed him, and then went to check on George. She never told Dylan what happened that afternoon, but she came back with Ryan’s school things and a bag of clothes. He stayed with them for almost a week, crying himself to sleep every night in Dylan’s bed while she held him and sang “Here Comes the Sun” and “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”. Finally George called, demanding that Ryan come home.

The next day at school, Ryan showed up with a cut lip and bruises on his arm. He told the teacher he had fallen off his bike. The next week, there were new bruises. It went on like that for a while. Ryan always said he had fallen off his bike, or slipped in the bath, or tripped walking down the stairs. Dylan knew he was lying, but he wouldn’t tell her the truth. 

But Grace knew, too. One day, when Ryan had five finger-shaped bruises around his neck, she was really mad and went over to Ryan’s house while Ryan and Dylan were watching TV with Tim. When she came back, she had a black eye. She told the kids to go upstairs and stay in their rooms, but Tim hid in the shadows at the top of the stairs and listened. A few minutes later someone knocked at Dylan’s door. It was a policeman, who said he wanted to talk to Ryan. Ryan screamed and cried and clung to Dylan, and she told the policeman that she wouldn’t leave Ryan. The policeman asked Ryan if his dad had hit him. He cried some more but said no. Finally, after asking a lot more questions, the policeman left. Later, Tim told Dylan that Grace had called the police and said that George was drunk and had hit her, and that he hit Ryan, too.

The thing was, Ryan’s father was a policeman. And he had a lot of friends who said that he would never do that, that she was some crazy old hippie, and no one should take anything she said seriously. So when Ryan showed up with cuts and bruises and, a few times, burns, she just took care of him and let him stay as long as he was allowed. It was two years before he admitted to Dylan what they all knew already – that his father had started beating him when his mother left. And that he drank. A lot. 

Dylan and Ryan grew up together. Ryan was at Dylan’s house almost every day, and Grace took care of him as much as Dylan or Tim. She had tried to turn the spare bedroom into his room, but he and Dylan begged for him to just stay with her, so Grace just bought her a bigger bed so they could both sleep comfortably.

***

A couple years after Grace moved her family to Summerlin, she started seeing a woman named Kennedy. Ken was really nice, and Tim and Dylan loved spending time with her. She built them a tree house in the old oak tree next to Dylan’s window. Dylan and Ryan slept out there on the weekends, if the weather was good enough. Ryan was terrified of thunderstorms, so they came in when it rained. 

When they were nine, Ryan started showing up at Dylan’s house late at night when his father was getting really angry or when he didn’t come home. He would climb up to the tree house and out onto the branch closest to Dylan’s window and throw pebbles from her driveway at the glass until she came out and went downstairs to let him in. Once, he broke the glass by throwing too hard, so Kennedy built a little ramp that led from the tree house to Dylan’s window, so Ryan could just knock on the window. Even though Grace told her not to, she started leaving the window unlocked for him.

***

It’s Christmas Eve during sixth grade, and George is working late, or drinking late after work, so Ryan made a tuna casserole for dinner. It’s cold and covered in aluminum foil by the time George stumbles through the door. He makes his way upstairs and finds Ryan sitting on his bed, staring at a picture of his mother holding him as a baby. Tears are flowing down his cheeks. George takes one look at the picture and tears it out of Ryan’s hands. He picks up Ryan by the collar and yells in his face, the stench on his breath enough to make Ryan nauseous. He tells him all the things he said that first day after she left, and so many times since then, but Ryan finally understands, at least a little. And then, when Ryan is sobbing and twisting in his grip, and George is in tears himself, he backhands Ryan so hard his shirt rips in his father’s hand and he falls hard on the floor. George snatches up the picture of Ryan’s mother and trips out of the room, slamming the door so hard Ryan can feel the floor shake with the force of it.

He tells Dylan all of this as he’s sitting in her lap, straddling her with his skinny thighs, hair matted to his cheeks with tears and melted snow. He had actually braved a snowstorm to get to her house, climbing through her window with his coat thrown over a sweater, jeans, and Converse. No gloves, no boots, no scarf or hat. His hands so frozen that he could hardly open the window, water dripping off his hair, which was down past his eyes now. She’d gotten him out of his clothes and turned around while he switched his boxers for a pair of warm pajama pants. Now she’s rubbing circles between his shoulder blades and stroking his hair while he tells her about it.

“H-he said that she n-never wanted me. He s-said he made her have me, that she didn’t want to be pregnant, wanted a-an ab-sorb-tion or something, I don’t know. But she-she didn’t want me, DeeDee. He said she’d always h-hated me, she thought I ruined her li-life. She just wanted to go to fancy parties and buy lots of nice stuff, she didn’t want some baby to have to take care of.” He breaks off and sobs, hiding his face in her hair until he can speak again. “That’s why she left. It really was because of me. That’s why he – he hates me so much. Because he loved her and I made her leave. She made him happy and I took that away from him. And now he’s just stuck with me.”

She wraps her arms tight around him and rocks back and forth, back and forth, crying with him now, angry and broken-hearted that anyone could do such a thing to her Ryan. And that he could believe it.

“Rybaby, Ryro, no.” He only lets her use those nicknames when he’s like this, when it’s just them and nothing else in the world exists. “No, baby, that’s not true. It’s his fault she left, he just wants to make you feel bad so he doesn’t have to feel bad.” He makes a raw sound of protest. “No, baby, listen to me. Your mom, she. She didn’t seem much like a mom. But your dad’s…he’s not a dad at all. He’s…” She fishes around in her head for the name she’d heard Grace call him more than once. “He’s an abusive, alcoholic piece of shit.” He looks up at her then, amber eyes wide. “I’m so sorry, Rybaby, I’m so sorry you have to deal with this. And I know it’s not the same, but Ryro, you know I’ll always love you, right? I’ll never leave, I’ll never hurt you like them. You’ll always have me, no matter what.”

His big eyes are swimming. His voice shakes when he whispers, “You promise?”

She gives him a sad sort of smile and holds out her pinkie earnestly. “I promise, Ryro. I’ll always be right here when you need me. I love you.”

“Love you too, DeeDee.” He wraps his arms around her, and she moves her hands up to cup his cheeks, kissing his forehead firmly. Then she kisses his cheeks, his temples, his chin, his nose, his lips. It’s a gesture of comfort, affection, one she’s repeated dozens of times since that first night after his mom left. But this time, his eyes catch hers before she pulls back and he moves back in, presses his lips more firmly against hers. It’s a little desperate and still sad, but mostly it’s just warm and soft and sweet. Her stomach does a little swoopy thing and her heart beats faster. It’s a long second before he pulls away and tucks his face under her chin. 

Eventually, his breath evens out, and she manages to wriggle down the bed and awkwardly pull the comforter over them both without dislodging him too much. He falls asleep immediately, emotionally exhausted, but she stays up a while, thinking about that kiss. She’s never been kissed, and she supposes that should count. Ryan is, technically, a boy, even though she’s never actually thought of him as such. He’s just, well, Ryan. But then she thinks back to that swoopy feeling, and how her heart picked up, and she decides it could probably count.

The next morning, while Ryan’s still asleep, she listens to the mixed tape he made her for her birthday and writes in her diary about how she had her first kiss.

***

Some months later, they’re spending the afternoon in Dylan’s pool. They had dragged her little trampoline over to the edge and had a summersault contest until that got boring, and now they’re lying on a couple of those long lounge floats with the little plastic pillows attached, floating around lazily and enjoying the fading summer heat. It’s late September, and no longer miserably hot. This is their version of fall. Vegas is a city of extremes, and they’re on the cusp of change.

“Ry?” They’ve been quiet for a while, and she’s not entirely sure he’s awake. He’s floating somewhere behind her head.

“Mmm?” Barely awake, from the sound of it.

“C’n I talk to you about something?”

“Always. What’s up?”

“Umm. Okay, so. I like this boy.”

“Yeah?” There’s a smile in his voice now. “Who’s the lucky guy?”

“Well…”

“Oh wait, I know! It’s Justin Timberlake, right?” he teased.

“Oh my god, gross!”

“Oh oh oh, I’ve got it. AJ McLean. It’s him, isn’t it?”

“Okay, first – I would not be proud to know that name, if I was you. Second, you’re an asshole! And third – just, never mind, I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

“Oh, come on. You know I’m just messin’ with you, DeeDee. I joke out of love.”

“This is really embarrassing to talk about!”

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry. Please talk to me…And anyway, I know who it is. Brad Manning.”

She sighed, defeated. “Yes.”

“So what d’you want me to do? Tell him you like him?”

“I already did that. He’s out of town with his parents this weekend, so we’re going to the movies next Friday.”

“Oh?” he sounded slightly surprised.

“Yup.”

“So what do you need me for?”

“Well, uh. I like him kinda a lot, and I really want to kiss him.”

“Uhhh, okay...Still not seeing what I’m supposed to be doing here.”

“Well, I’ve never actually kissed anyone. Like, a real kiss, you know? And I know you have, so. I thought maybe you could teach me.”

“What?”

She turns the raft around so she can see him. He’s only a few feet away. She can’t see his eyes behind his sunglasses. “You know, just tell me if I’m any good, and if not then like, give me some pointers.” She shrugs. “’s no big deal.”

“What – why can’t you ask one of your girl friends? Isn’t that what they’re for?”

“No, that’s what best friends are for,” she says pointedly.

“But I – ”

“I thought about it, asking Keri or Shanna. But kissing a girl seems different from kissing a boy. And also, just thinking about it, I felt really stupid. I mean, I feel pretty stupid right now, and this is you, so.”

He scrubs his hands through his dark hair. “Dee, it’s not – don’t ever feel stupid with me, okay? That’s not – it’s just weird.”

“I know it’s weird. But I don’t know what else to do. What if I suck at kissing?”

“You won’t – ”

“You don’t know that!”

“Oh jeez, Dee…okay, fine. I’ll do it.”

“Wow, way to make kissing me sound like the worst thing ever.”

“That’s not what I meant!”

“Sure, whatever. Look, just. Come here.”

“What, now?”

“Yes, now. If we wait, we’re both just going to be thinking about it and it’ll be weird.”

“Good point. Alright.” He paddles closer, guiding the float with his hands, until they’re close enough for her to reach out and pull him over, their floats bumping gently. He shifts carefully until he’s on his side, facing her, and takes a deep breath. 

“Okay, the most important thing to remember is to relax. If you’re all tense, your lips’ll be too hard. You don’t want to do this.” He puckers his lips like a fish, the way a little kid would do it. “But you have to have a little bit of like, firmness, otherwise it’s all,” he lets his mouth droop, hanging open in a dead sort of way. “And um, if you’re not wearing Chapstick or something, lick your lips first so it’s not too dry.” He flicks his tongue over his lower lip.

“Umm, okay. I think I got it.”

“Good. So then, I guess…we should try it?” She nods. He sounds awkward and nervous, not at all how he usually is with Dylan. It makes her a little sad how hard this is for him, how uncomfortable he obviously is with even the idea of kissing her. The thought of kissing him isn’t that bad – kinda weird, but it doesn’t, like, make her sick.

She leans up a little on her elbow to make it easier, and licks her lips, like he showed her. He leans in, and she can see herself in the reflection of his sunglasses, getting bigger as he gets closer. She swallows hard, he’s just a few inches away, and then – 

He loses his balance, starts to fall, and reaches out in a panic, grabbing her arm in a misguided attempt to anchor himself. They both topple into the water, coming up a few seconds later when they find their footing, spluttering. She looks at him, his sunglasses hanging off one ear, and bursts out laughing. He follows suit, and soon they’re clinging to each other to stay upright.  
When the laughter subsides some, she pulls his sunglasses off his ear, and he disentangles hers from her hair. She catches his eye and he sobers, blushing. She’s always thought his blush was adorable.

“So hopefully that doesn’t happen with Brad.” 

“Well, I’m guessing we won’t fall off our pool rafts at the movies.”

“Yeah, that’d be weird…um, you wanna try again?”

“Yeah.”

“’kay.” He licks his lips again, even though they’re wet with pool water, and leans in toward her. This time, she can see his eyes, the sun bringing out the green. She watches as he tilts his face to the left, and she goes the other way. He pauses when he’s an inch from her mouth, just for a second, and she closes her eyes. 

Then suddenly he’s kissing her. At first it’s just a soft press of lips, then he’s coaxing her lips apart and deepening the kiss, their mouths sliding together – and oh, that’s why he said to lick your lips. Her stomach does that swoopy thing from last winter, when they sort-of kissed. His mouth is so soft, and she’s very aware of his hand, his long fingers wrapped around her arm. 

Sometime later, they break apart, out of breath. Her eyes blink open to find him staring at her like he’s just noticed she’s there. Maybe he was pretending I’m one of those girls he likes kissing. The thought makes her sad again. She wasn’t pretending he was Brad. She wasn’t really thinking about anything except how nice his lips were.

She tries to compose herself and looks at him expectantly. “So uh, how was I? Was that okay?” 

He blinks repeatedly. “What?” And then, “Oh, right, yeah. It was um, really good.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. You’re a natural.”

“Cool. Um, thanks.” She drops her hand from his shoulder and starts to move away, but he doesn’t let go of her arm. She stills and cocks her head to the side curiously.

“I was thinking. You’ll probably want to French-kiss Brad, right? So, do you uh, wanna try that?”

“Oh. I didn’t really think about – yeah, I definitely want to do that.” She’s not sure if she’s talking about Brad or Ryan.

“Okay.” He’s not so hesitant this time, leaning in quickly and pressing his lips to hers, already open enough to take her bottom lip between both of his. He sucks gently, and she gasps. When his tongue slides across her lip, her legs feel a little shaky and she puts her hand on his waist to anchor herself. His hand goes to her neck, thumb rubbing over her jaw, and he pushes his tongue into her mouth. She meets it with her own, caressing, mirroring his movements. Soon she’s dizzy with excitement and a lack of oxygen. They separate just enough to take a breath, and immediately she misses his mouth. 

“God, Ry, why didn’t you tell me it was like this?”

He shakes his head and says breathlessly, “It’s not, usually.”

She moves forward, feeling suddenly bold, and kisses him deeply, licking into his mouth and swallowing the little surprised sound he makes. 

Ryan tastes wonderful, like apple juice and Sour Patch Kids and something else, something delicious that she instinctively knows is just Ryan. Her hand moves up from his shoulder to the back of his head, holding him in place while she explores his mouth. She can’t think about what’s happening, she just does what feels good. When he pulls her lip between his teeth, biting down gently, she shivers and retaliates by sucking his tongue. He moans into her mouth, and the sound vibrates down her whole body, concentrating between her legs. She slides her hand around from his waist to his back and steps toward him more, needing to be as close as possible, wanting to crawl inside his skin.

As soon as she gets closer, though, he gives a little cry and breaks the kiss, gasping out a broken, “No!”

“What?” She tries to move back in, but he just steps away. She holds on, not letting him go far.

“We. We have to stop.”

“No. We really, really don’t.” She can’t remember why they started kissing in the first place, but she knows she’s definitely not ready for it to be over.

“Yeah, we do.”

“Why?” She hadn’t meant for that to come out so whiny.

“Because I – I’m getting really, um…excited.” He bites his lip, which is red and swollen and she can’t look away from it.

“Yeah,” she says, feeling her heart race. “Me, too. So what?”

“No, I mean. Like…turned on.”

“Yeah,” she says again, “me, too,” and it feels like a revelation. She is actually turned on from kissing Ryan. But right now she can’t really think about what that means, the ramifications and possibilities of the way she’s feeling. All she can think about is how to get his lips back on hers.

His eyes go wide, and she finally looks up from his lips. “Really?”

She nods quickly. “So don’t be like, embarrassed or whatever. Just, I don’t wanna stop.”

“No, we have to. It is embarrassing.” She notices for the first time that his cheeks are slightly pink, and she’s pretty sure it’s not just from the sun. 

“But – ”

“It’s different for you, you’re not a guy.” 

“What? What does that have to do with anything?”

“Dee, come on, just. Let go.” He wraps his long hands around her wrists and pulls her hands away, then takes a quick step back, crossing his arms over his torso so that his hands are on his skinny hips.

She’s still staring at him, head cocked, eyes narrowed, trying to understand. His eyes are averted and now he’s definitely blushing. Then it hits her, what he’s trying not to say.

“Oh!”

He catches her eye quickly before looking away again, worrying his lip between his teeth once more.

“Really?” Now it’s her turn to be surprised. “You mean you’re – ” she gestures down, under the water.

“Yes,” he says tensely. 

“Wow.”

“Yeah, well.” 

There’s a really awkward silence where she’s trying to process the fact that she did that to him. After a minute, she dives under the water and resurfaces at the other end of the pool. “You wanna go inside?”

“Uh, I need a minute here.”

“Oh, right. Well, I’m gonna go take a shower. Just come up to the bedroom and you can go in once I’m done.” There are two bathrooms in the house, but the one downstairs doesn’t have a shower.

“Um. Okay. See you in a few minutes.”

When she takes off her bathing suit in the shower, she’s slick and hot between her legs. She marvels about the fact that it was Ryan to draw that reaction out of her, and gets really confused when she tries to understand what that means. She doesn’t like, like him in that way. She’s never actually thought about – I mean, he’s her best friend. Not exactly crush material. Still…that was one hell of a kiss. She has nothing to compare it to, but she’s pretty sure they won’t all be that good.

When she gets back to her room, changed into a pair of baggy shorts, Ryan’s got a towel wrapped around his waist, over his bathing suit. He’s sitting on the edge of her bed flipping through a music magazine, and when she comes in he doesn’t say anything, just walks out carrying a little pile of clean clothes.

She brushes out her black hair and pushes it back with a headband, since it’s not long enough to put in a ponytail, then picks up a bunch of dirty clothes and takes them down the hall to the laundry room. When she’s passing the bathroom on the way back, she thinks she hears her name over the sound of the shower. She rolls her eyes, figuring Ryan forgot to grab boxers again or something, and knocks, but there’s no answer. 

She cracks the door and sticks her head in, eyes shut, asking what he wants. Again, no answer, but then she registers a pained sound from the direction of the shower and her eyes fly open, ready to spring in case Ryan has fallen or something. 

He hasn’t.

Her shower curtain is clear plastic with bubbles and rubber duckies printed along the bottom and top, so even with the heavy haze of steam, she can see him almost perfectly. He’s standing under the spray, leaning with his elbow resting against the wall and his fist pressed tight against his mouth. She follows his long, lean body down to where his arm is flexing, hand moving lightning-fast on his dick. Her eyes grow wide as saucers as more of those choked-off half sobs escape past his fist. It almost sounds like he’s crying, but she knows he’s not and her body throbs with want, the feelings from a little while ago surging through her again.

She can’t move, can’t leave, even though a small, distant corner of her brain is screaming at her to go, that she shouldn’t be seeing this. Her knuckles are white where she’s gripping the door handle so tightly, watching his ass flex as he thrusts into his hand, broken words pulled from his lips. She thinks she might hear her name again, and she’s trying to take in that fact when he goes quiet, freezing for an instant. She’s afraid he sensed her somehow, but then.

Then he starts up again, fast and hard, and his hand flies out and slams against the wall, fingers splayed out, and he lets out this long moan that starts out like a growl and rises in pitch until it’s almost a whine. It goes on for what seems like a really long time, and when it stops he slumps against the wall, chest heaving as he catches his breath. 

Dylan can finally move, and she has enough presence of mind to be really careful when she shuts the door, avoiding the squeaky floorboard as she makes her way back to her room and falls heavily onto the bed.

She knows what he was doing, of course. Her mother talked to her about masturbation when she caught Dylan putting her hands up her skirt in the mall at the age of six. Grace told her daughter that it’s completely normal and okay to want to touch yourself in that way, and it can be really really good, but that you can’t do it in public. It’s like being naked, she said – it feels good and it’s perfectly natural, but you can’t just run around doing it anywhere.

Since then, she’s learned that boys do it too, but it’s kind of different for them because they have different parts. She has a basic idea of how it works for them, but she’s never actually seen it, never really given it much thought. She certainly never thought of it as hot – never thought it would make her feel like this, make her want to do it, too. But her panties are undeniably wet, and she can’t resist the urge to touch herself, rub over her pants, shivering at the touch. She lets her eyes fall closed and thinks of the sounds Ryan had made, the way he was biting down on his fist to try to stay quiet…and then she thinks about kissing him, how his lips and tongue and teeth had felt, how sweet he tasted. She comes in under a minute, shivering and panting, sitting there on the edge of her bed. 

Afterwards, she takes her now uncomfortable panties off and throws them behind the closet door. At the sound of the bathroom door opening, she hastily steps back into her shorts, not having time for new underwear, and throws herself on the bed, picking up the same magazine Ryan had been reading and flipping to a random page. Ryan comes back in and their eyes meet, both guarded like they aren’t usually with each other. 

After a long silence where he’s just standing in her doorway, he asks if they have any frozen pizza. They spend the rest of the afternoon in her room watching both Ghostbusters movies and eating junk food, just like every other day. But for the rest of the day, they’re both careful not to touch each other at all. Ryan goes home to sleep, which is nearly unheard of for a Saturday night. Dylan masturbates twice more before he comes back late the next morning, unable to think of anything but him.

***

Two weeks later, Dylan comes home from her second date with Brad and calls Ryan to come over as soon as she gets to her bedroom. When he gets there, she tells him how Brad totally tried to grope her in the parking lot of the mall, and when she wouldn’t let him he called her a prude and broke up with her. She had responded that she was glad because he was boring and kissing him was gross because his breath was terrible.

Ryan laughs and kisses her on the cheek and tells her she’s awesome, then holds her hand all night while they cuddle up in her bed and watch “Real World” reruns.

***

For Christmas that year, Grace gives both of them guitars. Ryan tells her that it’s too much, he can’t take anything so nice, but Grace cuts him off with a firm shake of her head. She says that he deserves it because he’s been working hard in school – which isn’t strictly true; they just pretend to study in her room while they’re listening to music and reading magazines, and good grades sort of come naturally to both of them – and that Dylan wouldn’t bother learning if he wasn’t doing it with her – which, okay, maybe that one’s kinda true. Besides, she tells him, it’s old and used so it wasn’t that expensive. He launches himself at her in a fierce hug and lets her kiss him on the cheek and cries a little.

Dylan and Ryan start playing together in her garage after school almost every day, and in their minds they sound every bit as good as the music they’re trying to play – Nirvana and Blink 182 and old Beatles stuff. Grace sort of bursts their bubble when she tells them they’re giving her regular migraines, but she makes up for it by buying both of them lessons for six months.

***

Dylan and Ryan have a pool party for their 7th grade graduation. It’s a pretty good party; they have an epic water balloon fight in the back yard and eat lots of food and listen to music so loud that Dylan’s glad her neighbors are cool (plus, she’s pretty sure a couple of them buy pot from her mom, so that helps). 

Dylan and Ryan both get painfully sunburned, because not even liberal applications of 80+ sunblock can protect their white skin. So by the time everyone leaves, they’re a couple of walking tomatoes. Ryan got it worst on his chest and shoulders, because he spent at least an hour on the phone with his most recent ex-girlfriend, trying to convince her skanky, cheating ass to get back together. Dylan, on the other hand, got it bad all along her back while she floated around talking to everyone. They both have red cheeks and white spots around their eyes from their oversized sunglasses.

After everyone leaves, they take turns in the shower while the other cleans up the cups, plates, and water balloon pieces from the deck. When Ryan gets out of the shower, he’s still shirtless; he says it hurts too much, and keeps poking one bony finger into the bright red skin of his shoulder and chest. She rolls her eyes, unwilling to admit that she can sympathize completely, and the only reason she put on a pair of soft sleep shorts is because it meant her thighs didn’t get chaffed by rough denim.

“If it hurts, stop poking it, you ‘tard.”

“But it hurts.”

“Oh my god, you’re such a dumbass. Come on, I think Grace put a bottle of that cool aloe crap in the fridge.” 

Sometimes, Dylan’s mother really is the best, seriously. She had provided ample provisions for them to enjoy at the party and then gone to stay at her girlfriend’s house for the night, in order to avoid the “hoard of summer-crazed teenagers”. Dylan isn’t sure her twenty or so friends, who are mostly pretty mellow, count as a hoard of anything, but she’s grateful anyway. Grace’s only proviso was that Dylan can’t let any boys spend the night. Ryan, of course, doesn’t count as a boy in either of their books.

They find the after-sun gel and head up to her room. She puts on a CD and sits Ryan on the bed, settling herself behind him to rub the cold gel into his shoulders. He cries out in protest when it touches his overheated skin. She snorts and calls him a pussy, so he shuts up, but goosebumps quickly erupt over every inch of visible skin.

“You know,” she says thoughtfully, “you’re so lucky I’m your best friend. If you were friends with a guy, I bet you’d have to do this yourself.”

She works his shoulders and back slowly, making sure to cover every bit of reddened skin, before moving around to his chest. She gently rubs circles over the flat, smooth planes of his abdomen, from his neck to navel, while he sits with his feet planted on the bed, leaning back on his hands. His eyes fall closed as she finishes up by swiping the cool gel across his cheeks and forehead. When she announces that it’s her turn, his eyes blink open and he pulls his knees up to his chest quickly.

She pushes her shorts down, stepping out of them to reveal pink panties printed with black hearts. She lies on her stomach beside him and unties the knot on her halter top, letting it fall open in back and giving him access to every bit of red skin. He’s still and quiet for a long time, and she looks up from the pillow of her arms to find him staring at her, looking surprised.  
“What, like you’ve never seen me in my underwear before. I’m not trying to seduce you, asshole, I’m looking for a little help here. Now get over here and put that shit on me, this fucking hurts.”

“Um, yeah. Yeah, okay.” The bed dips as he moves over to her and squeezes the green gel directly onto her skin. She yelps at the chill. 

“Asshole! You’re supposed to put it on your hands first!” He laughs at her cruelly and says something about payback being a bitch before he starts rubbing the soothing lotion on her shoulders in slow circles. It’s cool and lovely and instantly relieving, and she lets out a long, contented sigh. His big hands are soft all over, except the calluses from playing guitar, which are a little too scratchy for her liking at the moment. As he gets lower, moving down past her waist and brushing the top of her panties, she feels a familiar heat building low in her stomach. She tells herself it has nothing to do with Ryan; it’s just being touched in that way, the firm pressure and the feel of his skin on hers and the fact that she’s almost naked. 

Next he works up from her ankles to her thighs, and she almost lets out a little moan as his fingers brush over her inner thighs and the soft skin where her butt joins her thighs. His fingers twitch at the bottom of her ass and he pulls away quickly, practically jumping off the bed and heading for the door. 

“I think I left the phone outside, and um, I’m thirsty, and I left my shirt by the pool. I’ll be right back, just stay here. Get dressed. Don’t forget to do your face.” By the time she looks up, confused by his hastiness, he’s disappearing out the door.

“O-kay,” she says to herself as she slides off the bed and gets dressed again.

After a minute she decides that a drink actually does sound like a good idea, and goes downstairs to get some lemonade. When she finishes it, she realizes that she kind of has to pee, and decides to use the downstairs bathroom instead of going all the way upstairs again. No one ever uses that one except when they’re in the pool and have to run in or something like that, but what the hell, it’s closer.

The door is closed, which is weird, but she doesn’t really think much of it and pushes it open – and then freezes, wide-eyed. Ryan has one hand planted on the counter next to the sink, his pants open, jerking himself off fast and hard. She can see him in the mirror, but just down to his chest. His head is back, mouth open, eyes shut. She’s transported back to the last time she saw this; it’s the same show, but he seems to be a little more…refined now. He’s moaning and cursing brokenly, but not loud and uncontrolled like before. She thinks he must be getting there already because his breathing is shallow, but that seems a little weird because he left her room like three minutes ago.

She realizes she’s right, though, when he starts chanting, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, fuck yeah, god,” and speeding up even more. She watches, fascinated and turned on as hell, as his hips stutter forward and he lets out that same moan she remembers hearing once before, quieter now but much the same, starting low and ending in that helpless whine. He shivers violently and his shoulders slump, chin falling to his chest. Another couple of seconds pass, and she starts to come back to her senses, to realize that maybe she should leave, like, now. 

That’s when his eyes blink open and he sees her in the mirror. His head whips around and he’s staring at her with eyes like saucers, not breathing. Half a second later he’s shoving himself back into his pants. “Dylan, what the fuck?”

“I – I wanted to pee – I didn’t mean to – I’m sorry,” she stutters. The high pitch of her voice catches her off-guard, and that’s what finally makes her turn and run. She gets outside and just stands there for a moment, thoughts racing around in her head, and then she compulsively starts cleaning up again.

Ryan comes out a few minutes later, fully dressed, with his backpack over one shoulder, walking directly past her toward the gate.  
“I’m gonna go home.”

“What?”

“I said I’m – ”

“No, don’t leave. Please, Ry.” He stops but doesn’t look quite at her. She casts around for something to say. “If you go, we’ll both be bored and alone tonight. That’s stupid. There’s no reason –”

He finally meets her eyes. “Dylan, how long were you standing there? I didn’t hear the door open.”

She blushes and hopes the sunburn covers it. “I don’t know, a minute?”

“A – seriously? What the actual fuck, Dee?”

“I didn’t mean to see you, I was just going to pee!”

“But then you just stood there?”

“Well…”

“Yeah, I’m gonna go.” Now he sounds borderline pissed. He turns on his heel and starts walking toward the gate.

“No – Ry, come on! You don’t have anything to be embarrassed about! I mean, come on, seriously, everyone does it!”

He stops, takes a deep breath and turns back to her. “Oh yeah?” he says sarcastically. “Do you?”

She shrugs. “Sure.” She’s still hoping the sunburn covers her blush. It’s not that she’s embarrassed about doing it, but she still thinks about him sometimes, about the other time she caught him, and that’s still confusing and embarrassing and just so weird and she feels totally creepy when she does it.

That stops him for real. “Wait, what? Really?”

“Duh. I mean, I’ve never gotten off with anyone else. What the hell d’ you think?”

“I. Um.”

She smiles and rolls her eyes at him. “C’mon, Ry. Put your stuff down and let’s go inside.” She holds out her hand and waits patiently while he goes through an epic internal struggle before twining his fingers with hers and letting her lead him back into the house. She snags an armful of leftover sandwiches, chips, and cookies that they piled on the counter and they go back up to her room. He drops his stuff by the closet and she sits on the floor by the TV, holding out a Playstation controller expectantly.

She waits until they’ve played two games of Crash Bandicoot. “So can we talk about it?”

“What do you mea – oh god! No!”

“Why? I’m curious, I wanna know how guys do it and stuff.”

“Jesus, Dee!”

“Oh come on, man! Don’t be so weird! We talk about everything. You told me in great detail about the time Kristy Donner gave you a handjob at that party. How is this any different?”

He sighs hugely and scrubs his hands over his face, wincing immediately at the painful sunburn there. “Okay, if it’s so not embarrassing or weird, can I watch you?”

That one totally caught her off-guard. “What?”

He gains confidence from her obvious discomfort. “Come on, ‘don’t be so weird’, Dee. You saw me, I think it’s only fair.”

“Wh—that’s totally different! I mean, it’s not like you would have let me see you if I’d asked!”

He narrows his eyes and she knows she’s won that one. They stare at each other mulishly for several minutes before he just shrugs and picks up his controller again.

***

That night, Ryan and Dylan get high for the first time. They dip into Grace’s stash and steal a joint. Ryan’s smoked cigarettes a few times so he shows Dylan how to inhale, and they try it sitting in the tree house. 

When they stop coughing, they lie together on the blanket they brought outside and drink Slurpees from the corner store and listen to the music drifting out of Dylan’s open window. They talk about all kinds of weird shit for what feels like hours, until the subject drifts back to sex, which has started to become a trend in the past six months or so. 

“So can we talk about it now?”

He knows what she’s asking without her needing to explain it. “God, Dee.” He’s quiet for a minute. “Yeah, okay,” he says quietly. “But you have to tell me stuff too. And you have to be totally honest.”

“You, too.”

“’kay.” They pinkie-swear, which means the deal is unbreakable and sacrosanct.

They talk about how often they do it and where, when they started and how it feels. They share embarrassing stories, like the time Ryan got a huge boner in class because he saw Jen Simpson’s bra when she dropped a pencil and he had to go jerk off in the bathroom between classes, and the time Dylan’s mom caught her masturbating with the shower head. 

“So what do you think about?”

“What?” Her heart immediately starts to race, flashing to images of Ryan in the shower, the sound of him moaning, the taste of his mouth, the thing that might or might not have been her name. “I’m not gonna tell you that!”

“C’mon! We said totally honest.”

“And I’m honestly telling you no!”

He sighed in exasperation. 

“Fine then, what do you think about?”

“Oh.” He must’ve been too high to realize she would inevitably turn that around on him. “Uhh. Girls?”

“Okay, fine then, if that’s how it’s gonna be. I think about boys.”

He rolls his eyes and punches her in the arm, and she giggles and shoves him. They roll around the tree house for several minutes, just laughing and pushing at each other.

“Ry?” she says, trying to catch her breath. He’s still giggling a little. “You can watch if you want.”

It’s a few seconds before his stoned brain catches up with what she said. “…what?”

She nods and takes her lip between her teeth. “But only if you do it, too.”

And that’s how, five minutes later, they find themselves back in Dylan’s room, Ryan in the desk chair and Dylan on the bed, propped against the pillows. She takes a deep breath and slides her hand down her body, rubbing herself through her cotton pajama shorts, panties already wet. She can see him across the room, hard-on tenting his own shorts obscenely. His hand goes down to rub at it.

She doesn’t feel as nervous as she would have expected; she figures she probably has the weed to thank for that. But also, something about Ryan being here, watching her…

She slips her shorts off so she’s just in her panties and t-shirt. She wonders if he can see the wet spot on her panties. She wants to ask, but doesn’t. Instead she stares from his dick, hard and sticking up in his shorts, to his face, watching her hungrily, eyes wide and intense.

A couple minutes later, she knows he can see how wet she is, because she can feel it soaking through the material and onto her fingers. He’s stroking himself steadily, biting his lip hard, trying to stay quiet. Her eyes keep flickering to his lips, remembering how it felt to kiss him. It’s still the best kiss she’s had.

“I wanna see, Ry. Take off your pants.”

“You first.”

It doesn’t take her long to decide that’s a really good idea. What she’s doing feels really good, but she knows it’ll be so much better without the barrier of her underwear in the way. She lifts her hips and slides her wet panties off, but keeps her legs together.

“Your turn,” she says softly.

He hesitates for about half a second, then gathers his courage and pushes his shorts down, letting them fall to his ankles. He’s wearing green boxers with the Blink 182 rabbit that she gave him. He swallows hard, then reaches through the fly and pulls out his dick.

Oh shit, she thinks, and then realizes she didn’t just think it.

“What?” There’s no small amount of insecurity written across his face. He looks down at his lap and then back at her.

It takes a moment for her to find her voice. “Is that normal?”

“What?” he asks again, higher-pitched. He starts to put himself back into his boxers.

“No!” It comes out a little more desperate than she’d intended. “Just. I mean, it’s like, really big. I’ve never seen…are they all like that? How the hell does sex even work? I mean, that can’t possibly fit…”

It’s hard to tell, what with the sunburn, but she thinks he’s blushing. A smug smirk tugs at the corner of his mouth and he definitely stops trying to hide his huge boner. Instead, he spreads his knees and strokes up the length, not responding to her questions. 

“Your turn,” he repeats back to her, and his voice has gone all low and heavy.

She slowly lets her knees fall to the sides, giving him a perfect view of her glistening wet pussy. His hand falters and his mouth drops open a little. He stutters out a few half-formed syllables and she sees his dick twitch in his hand, and it’s her turn to smirk, running one hand up the inside of her thigh until she reaches her overheated center.

The first touch of her fingers on her bare pussy is heaven, and she’s not putting on a show when she moans loudly and arches her back, circling her fingers around her clit. When she looks back up at him, he’s licking a wide stripe across his hand before returning it to his cock. His grip is firm and she watches intently as his long long fingers slide up and down. She pushes one finger, then two, into her slick pussy, thrusting slowly, using her palm to rub over her swollen clit. He groans at the sight and adds a twist on every other upstroke.

“What’re you thinking about now?” he pants.

“Not thinking. Watching, feeling…and listening. You – unnhh – don’t need to be quiet.”

He nods. “Yeah, I do. Otherwise I’ll say something stupid.”

“Like what?”

He shakes his head. “Like – just don’t. Don’t worry about it.”

She starts to protest, but he distracts her by changing pace, slow and then fast, slow and then fast. It works. She curls her fingers inside her, rubbing her g-spot and clit at the same time, and her eyes roll back. 

“Fuck,” he groans.

“You have no idea.” She can feel the tension start to build in her belly. “Shit, Ry. Feels so good, I’m almost – there, ungh.”

“Yeah,” he breathes, hand speeding up, ostensibly racing her to the finish line, “Yeah.” She watches as his eyes drop shut and his brow furrows. He’s biting his lip again but he can’t quite contain the sounds that escape. His hips start to buck up into his fist and his rhythm falters. He stops for half a second, breath catching before going even faster, harder.

She’s teetering right on the edge, but she stills her hand so she can focus on him. She really, really wants to see him come. She’s rewarded seconds later with the sight of him shooting thick white stripes up his stomach and chest, all over his boxers and his hand. The whole thing is accompanied by that sexy-as-hell moan – she can’t even try to deny how much it turns her on, at least not in her head. 

As Dylan watches it all unfold, her body acts of its own volition, hips thrusting up into her hand, fingers curling involuntarily, and she cries out as the tension that’s been building explodes outward through her entire body. Her toes curl, her free hand twists in the sheets, and as she meets Ryan’s dark eyes, she has to bite her tongue really hard to keep from saying his name.

When she starts to come down, she unthinkingly pulls her fingers out and sucks them clean of her juices. She’s not trying to put on a show, it’s just a habit she’s developed over the years. She likes it. In the back of her mind, she likes the surprised little choking sound it elicits from Ryan, too. One last shiver runs through her body. 

After a minute, Ryan pulls his pants back up over his sticky boxers and takes off his shirt, wiping his chest and stomach and digging a new one out of his drawer. She pulls her pajama shorts back on and sits up, watching him warily. She’s not sure what to expect. 

“That was…” she has so many words in her head to describe what that was, she’s not sure which to go with.

“Weird?”

“Yeah. Not so much when we were doing it, but now…yeah. Weird.”

“You’re right. Definitely weird now.” He pauses. “What was it when we were doing it?”

“I’ll probably wish I hadn’t said this when I’m sober, but…really hot.”

“Yeah. Yeah, it was.” He sighs, not looking at her. “I’m gonna go.”

“Yeah, okay.” She watches him grab his shoes and backpack from next to the closet and walk out, all the while avoiding looking at her. He pauses for a second in the doorway to say a soft goodbye that she returns, and then he’s gone. The front door opens and closes a few seconds later, but it’s a while before she gets up to lock it. She’s really worried about what will happen now, but she can’t bring herself to regret it.

***

Ryan doesn’t speak to her for three days. It’s the longest they’ve ever gone without talking to each other. Even when she and Grace and Tim have taken vacations without Ryan, they still talk on the phone every day. She tries to call him a couple times. The second time, George answers, and tells her to hold on. He calls out to Ryan, speech slurred, and puts the phone down, but Ryan never answers. She waits for five minutes before she hangs up. 

Finally he shows up one afternoon, climbing through the window with a bloody nose and bruises forming on his neck. She cleans him up and they spend the afternoon watching cartoons. Neither of them mentions it again for a long time.

***

George decides to send Ryan to the private Catholic high school. They fight about it for a month before he starts, but George won’t back down. Something about Ryan needing more discipline and how he’d promised Ryan’s mom to send him to that school when Ryan was just a baby. It’s where she went to high school. Ryan cries and screams and shreds the uniform, earning him several beatings that are worse than usual. But in the end, George gets what he wants and Ryan starts classes away from Dylan for the first time since they met.

It’s an unmitigated disaster. The kids are stuck-up and just plain mean. They pick on Ryan because he’s quiet and doesn’t know anyone, and when they learn that his dad’s a drunk ex-cop, they make fun of him for that too. He starts cutting himself after the first week. Dylan cries and pleads with him not to do it, but he won’t stop, not even for her. He keeps getting in fights with George, and the kids at school pick on him for coming to school with bruises and cuts every day.

After a month of that, Ryan can’t take it anymore. He secretly formulates a plan to get himself kicked out. He starts fights and wears eyeliner and black nail polish and comes to school without his uniform, tries to fail all his classes. When that doesn’t work, he screams profanities at his teachers. The thing that finally does it is when he brings a knife to school and threatens his principal. He’s expelled on the spot, and George has to come to school to meet with Ryan’s principal and counselor, which means he has to sober up and make himself presentable.

That evening, Ryan shows up at Dylans front door cradling a broken arm and several cracked ribs. Grace takes him to the hospital, where Ryan tells the doctors that he fell off his bike into a ditch. They try to call George, even though Ryan lies and says he’s out of town, but he doesn’t answer. When the doctors see how Grace fusses over Ryan and Dylan sits with him constantly, they allow the two of them to take him home. He stays with them for a few days. 

The following Monday, he starts classes at Dylan’s school. He doesn’t cut himself anymore and he stays out of George’s way for the most part, taking the beatings when they come without complaint because he got the thing that mattered most to him. He can spend all his time with Dylan and see their other friends every day.

***

It turns out Dylan gets really horny when she’s high. She thought it would be a one-time thing because of the events surrounding her first time smoking, but it’s not. It’s not a problem when she smokes with most of her friends or boyfriends – that can actually turn out to be pretty fun – but when she smokes with Ryan, which is most often, it becomes something of an issue. When he starts to grow his hair out and wearing girls’ jeans (often her jeans), she can’t deny he’s rather attractive, although she still won’t admit, outside of when she’s really stoned, that she’s actually attracted to him. Even though he still creeps into her head almost every time she gets herself off. Even though he’s still the best kisser she’s found.

Then one day she realizes how incredibly sexy his hands are. It’s like a revelation, and it comes totally out of the blue. Her garage is hazy from the pot they smoked, and now they’re jamming with their friend Spencer. He transferred to their school at the beginning of the year, and they all became fast friends. He turns out to be a pretty good drummer, and comes over almost every Saturday to play for a few hours. When he joined them and they realized they had the makings of something resembling a band, Dylan switched from guitar to bass, because it just made more sense, rounded out the sound. She’s still not very good though, and guitar is her real love. This cool guy they met back when Grace first bought them guitar lessons, Jon, he’s a really good bass player and sometimes he comes over to hang out, get high and play with them for a while, and he’s been teaching her stuff. He’s a senior and has his own band though, who play at like, actual clubs and shit, so it’s just for fun. 

Jon is there on the day in question and they’re attempting a few of their favorite songs, but Dylan keeps fumbling the bridge to ‘Dammit’, because she’s really fucking stoned (Jon brings over the best weed, seriously). Ryan takes pity on her and comes over to help. He stands behind her and puts his arms around her to show her where her fingers should go on the frets – because his limbs are crazy long and he can actually reach around her easily, plus he grew like another 3 inches the year before, so he can see over her shoulder easily now. And that’s when she notices it. She’s always known how weirdly long his hands are, and she’s made fun of his spidery fingers on multiple occasions because he’s super insecure about it. But it’s like she’s seeing them for the first time, and the way they look wrapped around her guitar is fucking sexy as hell. He uses his hands to guide hers through the chords, and she tries really hard to pay attention, but she can’t stop staring at his hands, his fingers, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with the music.

After he goes away, she can’t stop staring at him, and messes up again when they start over. The next time he turns and plays to her, and because she’s staring so intently, she can mirror his movements and she picks it up fast. He smiles at her and she returns it shakily, painfully aware of her suddenly very wet panties. She makes it through two more songs but can’t look at or think about anything but his hands, and she has to run inside and lock herself in the bathroom to get off. It’s not the first time she’s done that while smoking up with him, but now she’s got a whole new set of images to think about, and she’s back downstairs within five minutes, bearing munchies.

Watching him eat is just pornographic now, the way he sucks his fingertips into his mouth to clean off the cookie crumbs or salt from chips. When he lights the bowl the next time they smoke, she’s wet all over again. 

After that, she notices everything he does with his hands. The way he holds a pen when he writes, how his fingers move lightning-fast on the game controller, and of course, the way he looks when he plays guitar. Whenever he holds her hand, locking their fingers together, her heart beats faster. When they’re sleeping and his hand finds its way around her body, she gets as turned on as when she’s fooling around with her boyfriend. Now, when the image of him jerking off creeps into her head at all the wrong (right) times, she remembers the way his hand looked wrapped around his cock. She thinks about what his hands would feel like on her body, his fingers inside her.

***

Jon has a party to celebrate the end of finals. They’re his last finals, and he’s graduating the next weekend. Even though Dylan and Ryan just finished their freshman year, it still feels like an accomplishment to get through all the exams. It turns out high school exams are a fucking bitch.

Jon invites half the senior class and a bunch of friends from the lower classes, because he’s a super nice guy and everyone likes him. His parents have graciously gone out of town for the weekend, and they have a pretty decent-sized house, but it’s totally fucking packed. There’re several kegs out back and a lot of different kinds of liquor, which Dylan steers clear of. 

(The one time she’d gotten drunk, at a party she went to without Ryan, she had come home to find him waiting in her bedroom, scribbling what would turn out to be song lyrics on her bed. He had smelled the alcohol as soon as she walked in the room, and had cried and screamed at her for an hour, and then stopped speaking to her for a week. Finally he texted her to say he was at the hospital and George had gotten in a car accident (drunk, of course). She and Grace had rushed over and the first thing she’d said to Ryan, as he clung to her desperately, was a promise that she’d never drink again. She pinkie-swore, and she’s never once considered breaking it.)

They have, however, smoked a record-breaking amount of weed, really fucking awesome weed supplied by Jon’s best friends, Tom and Bill, and are currently dancing in Jon’s large living room, where all the furniture has been removed to make a huge dance floor. They’ve spent the last half hour jumping and slamming into random people to System of a Down and Slipknot, dancing to Green Day and Weezer and Jimmy Eat World. Now Ryan’s standing behind her, holding both her hands to ground her while she bends over and whips her hair around to KoRn. By the time the song changes again, she’s out of breath and a little dizzy, and they’re both sweaty, but she’s having way too much fun to stop. 

Dylan lives for music – playing, singing, dancing, or just listening to it in her room. She gets lost in the rhythm. So when ‘Control’ by Puddle of Mudd comes on, she doesn’t think twice about holding on to Ryan’s hands and moving with the slower song. The thing is, it’s kind of a sexy song, with kind of dirty lyrics, and the kind of dancing that goes with that kind of music is kind of a lot more intimate than what they’ve been doing. It involves more touching, more swaying hips, more general contact between their bodies. She pauses momentarily when she realizes he’s already hard, must have been before the song even started, and how the hell didn’t she notice that? Even in the constricting jeans (that he borrowed from her for the party), it’s extremely obvious. 

He realizes when she realizes it, and tries to move his body a safe distance away from hers while still holding her hands, but she puts a stop to that by wrapping their joined hands around her waist and pushing her ass back into him. He freezes, stops moving entirely, and she presses her back all along his front, still dancing. She tips her head back onto his shoulder and he says, “DeeDee?” cautiously. 

Her lips inches from his ear, she whispers, “Ryro, just...” and finishes the statement by grinding against him to the tune of Wes Scantlin singing about ‘the dirty things you do’. He stops trying to pull away after that, and then she’s moving in a dirty rhythm while his incredible hands rest on her bare belly where her shirt has ridden up. He buries his face in her neck and she can feel his lips hot on her skin and his hips pressing forward into hers, moving with her. She drops her head back again, moaning low, and rolls her body against his. One of his hands moves to the slight curve of her hip and his fingers curl over her hip bone.

The song fades out and Offspring takes its place. She turns in his arms and pulls him down into a fierce kiss, licking into his mouth and moving one hand down the ridges of his spine to rest on his lower back, the tips of her fingers dipping under the low low waist of his (her) jeans. He kisses her back enthusiastically until someone bumps into them, knocking them apart. When he looks at her, meets her gaze, his eyes are wide, confusion and desire fighting for dominance behind them. She’s not so confused at the moment, and she takes his hand and pulls him to the edge of the dance floor and then out of the room.

When they make it into the hall and under the stairs, she pushes him up against the wall and resumes her attack on his mouth. His hands go to her back and into her hair and she rolls her hips into his. He groans into her mouth and slides his hand down to her ass to press her harder against him. Her fingers move down his side and she rubs her thumb over the hip bone jutting out above the top of his jeans. She knows he’s not wearing anything under them because they joked about it before they left.

His hand leaves her hair to trail down her body until he touches her bare thigh under the bottom of her short plaid skirt and then runs up again, under the hem of her skirt, up to her hip, fingering the strap of her panties. She drops her head to his shoulder and moans his name.

That seems to break some kind of spell, and he takes both hands away quickly. He’s breathing heavy and still deliciously hard against her body, but then he pushes her away a little, straightening up. 

“Shit, Dee, what the fuck just happened?”

She just shrugs, staring at his shiny red lips. It seems rather obvious, doesn’t it?

“We need to fucking stop this. This can’t – I mean. This can’t happen.”

“Why?”

“Why? What do you mean, why? It’s you and me, we don’t do this!” His voice has gone all high and freaked out.

“Well, we’re doing it right now, aren’t we? And it seemed like you liked it.”

“Well – ”

“Because I know I did.”

“You – what? Really?”

“You don’t believe me?” Before he can say anything, she takes his hand and slips it up her skirt so he can feel the wetness soaking through her panties.

His eyes flutter shut briefly. “Holy shit.”

“Yeah. And also,” she reaches between them to cup his hard cock through his jeans. He groans and drops his head against the wall, pushing involuntarily into her hand. She rubs her palm over the tight denim.

“That’s pretty much what I thought. So, you still think we need to stop?”

He lifts his head off the wall. “Fuck. Yeah, okay. C’mon.” He kisses her again, hot and quick, before taking her hand off his crotch and leading her up the stairs and straight to Jon’s room, which is, thankfully, unoccupied. He locks the door and backs her up against it, catching her mouth in a scorching kiss, biting and licking her lips while he palms her tit. When she wraps her leg around his, he holds it up with his other hand, their hips thrusting together, finding a good rhythm and trying to get the friction they both need. His hand slides up to her ass, under her skirt, and he breaks the kiss to make a broken little sound when he realizes she’s wearing a thong. Her mouth goes to his neck, licking hotly from his collarbone to his ear, and then sucking hard on his pulse-point. 

After a few minutes, he gives a little whine that doesn’t sound altogether happy.

“What’s wrong?” she pants in his ear.

“Just, these damn pants. It’s really – uncomfortable. They’re so fucking tight.” He wiggles his hips for emphasis. She can imagine, what with his huge hard-on and the scratchy denim rubbing against his bare skin.

“Aww, poor Ryro,” she says, half-teasing, half-seductive. “We should do something about that, then.” She drops her leg and reaches between them to scratch her nails up his length, making his breath hitch, and then falls to her knees in front of him. When she looks up at his face, she smirks at his comically surprised expression. She cups his cock through the jeans and grins up at him darkly.

“Jesus, Dee, what are you – ?”

She quirks an eyebrow. “Sorry, isn’t it obvious? You want me to spell it out for you? Alright. I want to suck your cock.” Her hands come up to undo the first button on his jeans. “You okay with that?”

He squeezes his eyes shut for a second and when he opens them, they’re so dark they’re almost black. He swallows hard and nods vigorously. “God, yes.”

“Good.” She goes agonizingly slow with the other three buttons, teasing both of them, but finally his dick springs out. She pushes the pants down just a little, past his hips and out of the way. “Fuck, Ry, you’re so fucking big. I’ve never seen anyone as big as you.”

His eyebrows lift and he blinks rapidly. “Really?”

“Really. Not that I’ve seen a lot of dicks, but still. I’m pretty sure this is not normal.” She wraps her fist around him tightly and strokes a few times to get the feel of it. It’s fucking gorgeous, smooth and pale at the base, turning an angry red at the fat head. And, “Shit, Ry, you shave.” He nods. “Me, too.”

His eyes go wide again and his dick twitches in her hand. “Oh my gooood, Dee, you’re going to kill me, I swear.”

“No, that’s not what I want to do to you at all.” She leans forward and licks a line from the base of his cock to the head. When she looks up at him again, she feels suddenly nervous. She bites her lip. “I’ve never done this before.”

“I know.” Which, of course he does, she’s told him everything she’s ever done with anyone. And she already knows before he says, “Me neither.” She nods and swallows before returning her full attention to the matter at hand (no pun intended) and licks her lips before taking him into her mouth. 

“Holy fuck, Dee.” His hips stutter forward, pushing him deep into her throat, choking her, and she pulls off. She glares at him, and he looks incredibly guilty. “Sorry, sorry, I’m sorry. Please don’t st–”

Before he can finish the sentence, she puts her mouth back around him, this time holding his hips while she slides down experimentally, seeing how far she can go. It’s not nearly all the way (he’s really big, okay, and she’s never done this before), but it seems good enough, based on the string of curses he lets out. She bobs up and down, and swirls her tongue around the head like she’d do to a lollypop. He pants and whimpers and moans her name, the sounds going straight to her pussy. As does the slick, salty flavor leaking into her mouth. It makes her mouth water even more, which eases the way to take Ryan deep, as deep as she can. She keeps her hand around the base so that he can’t push in too much, because it doesn’t seem like he can keep his hips still, thrusting minutely while clearly trying to restrain himself.

She holds still with him nearly at the back of her throat and sucks hard, hollowing her cheeks, pressing her tongue hard against the underside, and squeezes with her hand. He fucking keens, and she’s very close to coming on the spot, without being touched at all. He starts to shake all over, his hands threaded in her hair, not pushing or pulling, just holding on, and the beautiful sounds spilling from his lips get louder.

“Shit, fucking hell Dee, I – you have to stop, I’m gonna – oh god oh fuck Dee you have to stop I’m– ”

He pulls her hair then, trying to get her mouth off him before he comes, but she just sucks harder, working her mouth up and down, wrapping her tongue around his head and pressing underneath it. He cries out louder, a string of curses mingled with her name, ending with that fucking sexy moan as he floods her mouth with hot cum. It tastes…weird. Not terrible, a little bitter, but it’s definitely worth the look on his face when she swallows it. She keeps licking at him until he whimpers helplessly and pulls at her hair again, urging her to her feet. 

He pulls his pants up but doesn’t bother buttoning them and she dives in for another kiss, not really thinking about the fact that she still has the taste of his cum in her mouth until he makes a strange little sound. Her eyes fly open and she pulls back immediately, apologizing. He shakes his head and brings his mouth back to hers, tongue probing inside, humming in the back of his throat. Her pussy throbs.

“Please, Ry, please fucking touch me, I want. Need your hands, fuck – your fingers, please, inside me, god,” she babbles mindlessly. “Now, please, Ry, Ryan, I can’t.”

“Yeah, yes, fuck,” he says, nodding, and his hand is up her skirt half a second later, pushing between her thighs until she spreads her legs just enough. He moans when he encounters the material of her panties, impossibly wetter than they were downstairs, and pushes past them, sliding through her dripping folds to press one long, slender finger – fucking finally – inside her hot, needy pussy. She’s fucking desperate for it.

“Oh my fucking god, Dee, you’re – Jesus Christ, so fucking wet, so tight, holy fuck, how do you feel this good?” He drops his head to her neck, sucking and biting, and she’s totally out of her mind, lost in the feeling of lips and tongue and teeth and Jesus fuck, those fingers. 

“More, god, Ry, please,” she cries, and he immediately complies, pushing another one in, pumping them in and out. She’s done this before, with a couple of boyfriends, but it’s never felt – well, it’s never been Ryan’s fingers inside her. He takes them out long enough to rub circles over her clit, but she begs him to go back inside. His palm is sliding over her clit anyway, stimulating everything at once. 

“God, Ry, I fucking love your hands. I’ve been fantasizing about them for so long, wanting those sexy fucking fingers in my pussy.”

He stills, and she whines desperately, begging him not to stop. “Seriously?” he says softly, carefully. “You’ve thought about this before tonight?”

She’s too far gone to have any sort of internal filter. “Fuck yes, every time I get off, god, I can’t stop thinking about them. Fuck, I’m so close, Ry, keep going, please.”

“Fucking how long? How long have you been thinking about this?”

“I don’t know, oh god – ” she breaks off on a moan. It’s building up, so intense, so tightly coiled and hot in her belly.

He remains stubbornly still. “Tell me, Dylan. How long?” 

She nearly cries in frustration, trying to rub against his hand. “God, I don’t – months, okay? Your hands – fucking months!” 

“Holy fucking Christ,” he swears under his breath. He starts moving again, his fingers and mouth working her over, and finally it the tension boils over and she screams something that may or may not have been Ryan’s name, only he slaps his free hand over her mouth, muffling the sound as he bites down at the juncture of her neck and shoulder.

When she quiets, he takes his hand away and kisses her through the aftershocks, not taking his fingers out of her until he’s sure she’s really done. He lifts it to his mouth and sucks the tip of one glistening finger into his mouth. It’s one of the hottest things she’s ever seen, his fucking fingers coated with her juices sliding into his kiss-swollen mouth. He makes a very unmistakable mmm noise around his finger, eyes falling shut for a moment as he savors her taste.

She can’t take it; it’s too good but also too much of a tease. She needs those fingers in her mouth. Licking her lips, staring at his fuckinglongwetgod fingers, she takes his slender wrist in both hands and sucks both of them into her mouth, nearly choking when she gets to the bottom because really, they’re longer than a couple of the dicks she’s seen. She moans, both at the taste of herself and the fact that she can actually do this, he’s letting her, and he echoes the sound, watching raptly. She opens her eyes and stares him dead in the eye while she slides her lips up and down, licking all over, in between the webs of his fingers, and across his palm. It feels almost like a kind of worship.

He pulls his fingers away to kiss her again, and hardly any of the urgency is gone, even though they’ve both just come. They stumble across the room and fall on Jon’s messy bed, still kissing, hands roaming over each other’s bodies, exploring. Rediscovering the same territory they’ve known for years, and all the new possibilities for this same skin are overwhelming.

“So, months, huh?” He’s grinning, and there’s definite smugness in his voice.

“Your hands, yeah. Your fingers, I can’t stop thinking about it.” She shivers at the recent memory of them inside her. It had been a really good orgasm.

“Oh.” His face falls, and she starts to panic. Would it have been better if she hadn’t said anything about it, then? Let him think it’s just this one time, that he’s not her fantasy? (She’s not sure when Ryan had moved from being a collection of things to fantasize about to being her actual fantasy. Possibly sometime over the last hour.) Shit, did she just fuck up?

“What? Ry, what is it? Should I not have said that? I’m sorry, I – ”

“So, you just have a thing for my hands, huh? It’s like. It’s not me.”

Oh! “No, Ry, no! That’s not what I – your hands, I’ve been thinking about them for a couple of months. I was thinking about you before that. It’s definitely you.”

He smiles a little. “Yeah?” She nods emphatically. “How long? How long have you thought about me…about this, with me?”

She can feel herself blushing and looks away from his eyes. “Awhile,” she says evasively.

He grins wider and kisses along her jawline. “Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

“Seriously, Ry? Because it’s you. You’re my best friend, I’m not supposed to think about doing this stuff with you…And. I knew – I mean, I thought I knew – you’d never want me like that.” She says it softly, because even though they’re here now, and he looks so happy, there’s still a part of her that’s terrified he’s not going to want this in the morning once they’re sober. She can’t keep the insecurity out of her voice when she asks, “Did you ever…think about this? Before tonight?”

He buries his face in her neck and she can feel his smile; when he chuckles, she feels it rumble through his chest where he’s lying on her. He lifts his face enough so that his voice is clear when he answers. “Fucking hell, Dee, I’ve been thinking about you when I jerk off for like – well, pretty much since I started jerking off.”

“Really?” Her stomach flutters.

He nods and his hair tickles her cheek. She reaches up to stroke a hand through it. He’s started ironing it, and it’s soft from her conditioner that he always borrows. He bites her neck playfully. “So really, how long? You have to say; I told you.”

She laughs. “What is this, ‘I’ll show you mine if you show me yours’?”

“No, we already played that one.”

“You say it like we’re done.”

“Uh-uh. Just taking a little break…c’mon, I really wanna know.”

“Um, like two years? Or, no, two and a half?”

“Yeah?” He’s giving her that smile again, the one he saves just for her. “And you think about me when you…” he bites his lip and rolls his hips against hers. Fuck, he’s so hard.

“Pretty much every time, yeah.” She lowers her voice seductively. “You get me off so hard, Ry.”

He groans. The hand that’s been running up and down her body tightens painfully on her hip, fingers digging in, and it’s so damn good. 

“Fucking god damn Dee, are you trying to make me come in my fucking pants?” 

She hums. “Mmm, no, that’s really not where I want you to come.”

His hips press her down into the bed. “Shit, that’s. Jesus Christ, I fucking want you so much.”

She slides her hand down the back of his pants, grabbing his ass while she rocks her hips up, rubbing against his hard cock. “Then fucking take me,” she purrs, but there’s a hint of a whine in her voice as well.

“God. Okay, yeah,” he nods. “Here’s what I want to do. I want you to tell me all of it, I mean everything, from the beginning. Please, I really want to know. But I really, really need to eat your pussy like, right now. I’ve been thinking about it for so long, and fuck, you taste so goddam good, so much better than, like…Okay, it’s like what you said about my, uh.” He smirks a bit bashfully and grinds his pelvis into hers. “I haven’t done it a lot” (which she knows is true, he’s only done it with like two girls) “but I’m pretty sure that’s not normal. It’s fucking awesome.”

She just whimpers in response – she’s so turned on it’s hard to form thoughts, let alone words – but clearly he wants something more. His hand is up her shirt, playing with her tit, and he pinches her nipple lightly. “How ‘bout it, DeeDee?” he said, voice low and smoky, “Can I fuck your wet pussy with my tongue?” He sucks hard on her neck and licks over the mark (she’s sure there’ll be a mark, and in a far corner of her mind that’s still functioning, she can’t wait to admire it in the mirror) to prove his point.

“Oh my god, Ry, seriously? How is that even a question?”

“You asked me.”

She laughed a bit hysterically. “I just wanted to hear what you’d say.”

“Maybe that’s what I want, too.”

“Oh, well in that case, Ryan, you can do anything you fucking want to me. God, just say the word. Anything.”

“Fuck yeah. I’ll keep that in mind. Right now, let’s start with you having a lot less clothes on.” He sits up and pulls her with him so he can take her shirt off. She helps him out by unhooking her bra and letting it fall from her shoulders, savoring the sexy little sound he makes and the way his breath comes out in a big whoosh. She reaches over and pulls his shirt off as well, messing up his hair in the most adorable way. 

He kisses her hard, forceful, pushing her back into the bed, and urges her back toward the pillows, crawling over her body but not touching. Then he starts to slide his mouth down, down her neck, chest and stomach. He pauses to spend ample amounts of time on her small, perky tits, and allows his fingers to have a mind of their own, touching and caressing and squeezing. Then he looks up at her and says, “Remember, you’re supposed to be talking.”

“Oh, right, yeah. What do you want me to say?”

“Tell me what you think about. How it started. When you realized what it really was…God, tell me what you do, what you like, what you think about me doing to you, what you want to do to me. I don’t care, just. Tell me everything, Dylan, please.” She lifts her hips so that he can slide her short skirt down her legs and skim off her ruined panties. He licks his lips and glances down at her bare skin for a second before returning to her tits, then moves down her stomach.

“Okay, I can totally do that. Maybe,” she adds hastily as he kisses across her hip bones, nipping at the bone. She feels like she can’t keep the thoughts straight, can’t remember what she’s supposed to be talking about.

“Tell me how it started,” he says into the skin of her thigh.

“Um. It was that day, when we kissed. In the pool?” He hums an affirmation that yes, he does in fact remember the incident. “Well, that really turned me on, like, it was kinda crazy, and for a long time every time I kissed someone, I was always really disappointed because it didn’t feel so good, didn’t make me so hot.” His lips have reached her knee, and he’s kneeling between her legs. He slowly slides his fingers up the insides of her thighs, stopping just inches from where she wants, needs to be touched. She lifts her body, encouraging his touch. He just stays there, frustratingly close and yet not giving her what she really wants.

“You’re a fucking tease.”

“Really not, trust me. Just really want to take you all in, Dee. You’re so fucking beautiful.”

She really can’t argue when he says something like that. “Oh. Um…So, after that, I got out of the pool and went to change, and then, I. Shit, Ry. I saw you. In the shower.”

“What?” It’s so different from the tone and vibe he’s had for the last half hour, she snaps out of it a little. His eyes are completely focused now, wide open, and he’s biting his lip, hard.

“I’m sorry, I really didn’t mean to. I thought I heard you call me, and I thought you needed something, but when I opened the door, you were just…” She looks away guiltily. “Yeah, that. And I knew I should leave, I really tried, but I couldn’t stop staring at you. I’d never seen anything like it, I was just completely…fascinated. And I didn’t understand why, but it was turning me on so much. And the sounds you were making, just so totally out of control. You weren’t even trying to be quiet.”

“I didn’t know how, yet. I just really, really needed to get off, I couldn’t really think about anything else,” he says quietly. His fingertips are stroking her inner thighs, but he’s just sitting back listening to her talk now.

“But those sounds really stuck in my brain. Especially that thing you do at the end, when you come – you did the same thing back then, just louder. That fucking sound, Ryan, that sound, and the sight of you touching yourself, and kissing you…it was too much, I couldn’t. I ran back to my room and started touching myself, just trying to hurry up and come off before you came back in.”

“Did you?”

“Hell yeah. Man, I was so fucking horny, it took about a minute. Maybe less. And then that night, I couldn’t stop thinking about it, all of it, everything I’d seen and heard and felt, and it was all you. I kept thinking about it, and thinking about it made me so goddam hot I had to come like two more times before you came back the next morning. I’m just really glad you went home that night, because I don’t know how I would have made it through the night being that constantly horny. I would’ve had to sneak off to the bathroom to come while you were in the other room…not that I’ve never done that anyway.”

His eyebrows shoot up. “You have?”

“Yeah, fuck, like, a bunch of times, especially since we started smoking up. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I get really fucking horny when I’m stoned. It’s really, really hard not to just like, jump you sometimes.”

“Is that why…tonight?”

She thinks about it. “Yeah, I think…the music and the pot, I just couldn’t resist. You look so fucking good, Ry.” 

“Yeah?” He gives her a crooked smile.

“God yeah, and your hands, and when we were dancing you were so hard, I couldn’t stop thinking about…” She circles her hips, remembering what’s supposed to be happening right now and suddenly she’s desperate for it. “Ry, okay, I’ll keep talking, I swear, just. I really need your mouth on my pussy like, right now.”

He looks like he’s just snapped out of a dream. “Yeah, okay, fuck.” He lies on his stomach between her legs and lays hot, open-mouthed kisses up the inside of one thigh, nipping lightly with his teeth. Then he flicks his tongue out to taste her, just a tease, really. He hums happily and leans in to really get started, but first prompts her to continue. “Couldn’t stop thinking about what?” Then he licks up the entire length of her pussy with the flat of his tongue.

She arches off the bed with a little shout, and it’s a few seconds of heavy panting and blissful blankness before she comes back to herself enough to keep talking. “Your cock. I couldn’t stop thinking about your fucking cock. Ry, fuck, you have no idea how nice it is. I mean, I’m sure you’ve heard it before, but god, it really, really is. That day, when we…in my room….Fuck, I think that’s still the dirtiest thing I have ever done. Jesus. Even after that, though, when I couldn’t get you out of my head, kept thinking about how hot it had all been, I tried to tell myself it wasn’t you, it was just a very sexual thing and you’re a naked boy and of course it turned me on.”

Her words are breathy and broken and interspersed with moans and sighs and emphatic curses, but she gives herself a lot of damn credit for even trying to talk. “It was only this year I admitted to myself that I was really attracted to you, and that’s when I actually started really letting myself think about you when I was touching myself, let myself enjoy it without feeling too guilty or weird about it…

“Holy shit, Ry, just fucking like that. I’m – you’re gonna make me come, Ry. Jesus goddam shit, yes, just like that!” He redoubles his efforts, his tongue moving impossibly fast. “HolyfuckingshitRygoddamsofuckinggooooooood!” He moans happily as her juices spill over his tongue. His fingers dig into her thighs, the slight pain forcing another wave out of her. 

While she’s still catching her breath, he kisses his way up her body and sucks on her hip bones, her nipples, her neck, leaving a trail of hickeys all up her torso. “So,” he says, “How long do I have to wait to do that again?”

She laughs a bit manically in disbelief. She shakes her head. “I’m a chick, Ry. You don’t have to wait.”

“Seriously?” She just nods, grinning like an idiot. “Fuck, okay. But keep talking. Tell me more.”

She tells him more stories, specific incidents where she’d almost given herself away or been nearly out of control around him. About all the times she had to make up an excuse to get away long enough to get off in the bathroom before he came looking for her. While she’s watching his face move between her thighs, stroking his soft hair with one hand, she looks down the length of his body to see his hips moving on the bed. He’s rocking his body, rutting into the mattress, needing to get some friction for himself. He never buttoned his jeans back up, and she can imagine his big hard cock just rubbing against the sheets.

After a few minutes, he surprises her by sliding first one, then two long fingers into her pussy while he focuses on licking and sucking her clit. After that, speech becomes pretty much impossible. To her credit, she keeps trying, but it’s more moans than words, and the words aren’t very comprehensible. She doesn’t last long with his mouth and fingers working her over, and soon she’s getting too loud again, beyond even caring enough to try and tone it down. 

He snakes his other hand up her body and slides two fingers into her open mouth. Automatically, she starts sucking, and that’s what pushes her over the edge again. She cries out around his fingers, almost choking with the intensity, and rocks her hips against his mouth and fingers, vision swimming as she comes hard. His hips are moving frantically now, and when he groans loudly against her, the vibrations draw out her orgasm further.

As she comes down, his fingers slip free of her pussy and he rests his head on her thigh, sucking them lazily. When she catches her breath and thoughts begin to reform in her brain, something registers.

“Did you actually just come? Like, again?”

“Um.” 

She looks down and he’s blushing sheepishly. “That’s so hot. Come up here, Ry.” She grabs his hair and tugs lightly until he crawls back up the length of her body. She kisses him, cleaning herself off of his face with her tongue. “The only problem with you coming all over yourself is, it means I have to wait before I have another go at you. Which kinda sucks because I really want your cock back in my mouth.”

“Dee, shit, I’m fifteen. You won’t have to wait long, trust me.”

“Good. And in the meantime, you can start telling me your side…and maybe while you do that I’ll just get you the rest of the way naked and spend a while exploring your body.”

He kisses her again and nods. “That sounds like a fantastic idea.”

He lies on his back and lifts his hips for her to work his (her) jeans down his long-long legs. She just sits back and takes him in for a moment. Ryan is fucking gorgeous. Jesus, how did she miss this? Like, she had finally admitted that she thought he was hot, but holy fucking shit, he is just laid out like a porn star in front of her. He’s all bare planes and sharp, jutting angles, miles of smooth, pale skin just begging to be touched and licked. She doesn’t know where to start.

He starts talking. “I don’t know exactly when it started. I think at the beginning, it was more of a feeling thing, just the way you make me feel so good, and happy, and how it feels when you hold me and touch me. That day in your room in sixth grade, when we sorta-kinda kissed, you know?” She nods and starts kissing his flat stomach. “I was thinking about that stuff then…and after that I just thought about your mouth, and I always wanted to be kissing you, every time we were together. It wasn’t like, dirty or anything, but it was the most solid, persistent jerk-off fantasy I had…until I started thinking about doing other things to you.”

She works her way up his torso and spends a while on his neck while he talks. By the time she reaches his stomach again, and continues on to his extremely sexy hip bones, he’s as hard as he ever was, moving around under her mouth and breathing heavily as he struggles to continue talking. He tells her how he had his first wet dream in her bed, and how it was maybe about her. He confesses that he secretly compares all of his girlfriends and crushes to her, and always finds excuses for how they don’t quite measure up. How she creeps into his head while he’s fooling around with them, and he can’t help but wish it was her instead.

He talks to her until he can’t anymore, until she’s bobbing her head on his cock, hollowing her cheeks and trying everything she can think of, gauging his reactions. Again, he tries to warn her before he comes, and she ignores him and waits impatiently for that curiously unique taste that might just be a little addictive. She’s not really sure, but it seems like kind of a lot considering he just came twice in the last half hour. It might be a little sad that neither of them has lasted more than five minutes as of yet. But, sad or not, it’s lots of orgasms, so she’s not complaining.

When she comes back up to lie at his side, he says, “Kiss me, please. Let me…” When she does, he probes her mouth with his tongue, seeking out his flavor, and she’s not really sure why, but that’s really, really hot.

After that, they lie in Jon’s bed, touching each other and kissing a lot, talking periodically, telling more stories. It seems like it’s been a long time when there’s a knock on the door, loud. “Hey, who’s in my room? Time to come out.” He doesn’t sound mad – Dylan’s only seen Jon mad like twice ever – just amused.

They both curse softly and start scrambling to get their clothes back on. Dylan manages to find her skirt and bra quickly enough, and Ryan shimmies back into the super-skinny jeans. He’s doing up the button fly when he unlocks the door to let Jon in. Jon takes in his debauched state – jeans half-buttoned, no shirt, hair a mess and several fresh hickeys adorning his neck and chest – and smirks. 

“Say, Ry,” he drawls, “Dylan’s not by chance in here with you, is she?” There’s a definite teasing edge to his voice, and her first thought is, shit, he totally knows, which is met by a peculiar combination of panic and giddiness. The door swings open all the way to give Jon a view of Dylan, sitting on the edge of his bed and pulling her shirt on. He’s smirking at her, eyebrows raised in amusement. She glances over at Ryan, standing helplessly by the door, and hopes she’s not blushing as bad as he is. She locates his shirt on the bed and tosses it to him. Then she notices something else.

“Uhhh, Jon? I’m really sorry, but we, uh.” She’s staring at the dried white stain on his blue bedspread, not really sure how to finish the statement. Jon takes another step into the room and catches her line of sight.

“Aw, man!” He turns to glare at Ryan, who has just seen what they’re staring at and is now roughly the color of a lobster. “You fucking came on my bed? That’s just uncool, dude.”

Ryan looks like he wants to crawl into the closet and die, so she finds her voice and says, “I’ll buy you a new comforter, Jon. Sorry. Accident.” 

“Ugh. Yeah, yeah. Keep it, I definitely don’t want to sleep anywhere near your spunk. And don’t worry about a new one, Dylan. You can take me out for breakfast to make up for it…So, you guys are sleeping here, right? I’m taking you home in the morning?”  
“If – if that’s still cool,” Ry says, sounding far from comfortable – but at least he’s talking. That’s a start.

“Yeah, of course. Just, me and Cassie are in here tonight. Most everyone’s left, but some people are passed out downstairs. You guys can probably find a couch or something, if you’re willing to fight for it.”

“Cool. Thanks, Jon.” She really means, thanks for not being weird about this or giving us a hard time, and she thinks he might get it from the way he smiles at her. “We’ll just…” She scoops the big comforter up in her arms and starts toward the door. 

Before she’s quite there, she hears Jon chuckle. “Hey Dylan, you missin’ something?” She turns to see her purple thong dangling off one finger and starts blushing again. Ryan steps up to her rescue this time, taking the panties smoothly from Jon and stuffing them into one tiny pocket in his jeans with a muttered, “thanks”.

They head downstairs and smoke a couple more joints with the party assembled down there – the ones who are still conscious, at least – before playing an epic battle of Smash Brothers which does indeed win them the last unoccupied couch. They settle in comfortably and watch Some Bad Movie on Mystery Science Theater 3000.

When it seems like most people are asleep, and Dylan’s definitely heading in that direction herself, Ryan whispers, “Hey Dee, what is this? This thing that happened?”

Oh, shit. “Um. Well…what do you want it to be?”

He doesn’t answer right away, and she starts to panic. She tries to follow it up with an elaboration, hoping that’ll make it less weird, or give him an out if that’s what he’s looking for, or…or something. 

“I mean like, it could just be tonight, just a thing that happened. It doesn’t have to mean anything…Or like, if you wanted it to be a – a sex thing, a thing we do sometimes, just like, when we need someone to…you know. Or – or…” She trails off uncertainly.

“Is that what you want?” he asks softly. She’s struggling to place the inflection of his voice, but can’t put her finger on it.

She tries to seem casual, shrugging one shoulder and making a noncommittal sound. “Whatever you want’s cool.”

She feels his deep, quiet laughter rumble through his chest. He hugs her tight to his body and strokes his fingers through her hair, brushing it away from her ear so he can whisper, “You’re such a terrible liar, DeeDee…But yeah, that’s not what I want either.”

She pulls away just enough to see his eyes, searching, still unwilling to believe it could be true. “Really?”

“Of course. I want you, Dylan. I want to – to be your boyfriend and take you on dates and give you flowers and tell everyone we’re together. I want it all. I want to be yours.”

She kind of wants to cry with how happy she is. “I want that, too.” He beams at her, and even in the low light from the TV across the room, it’s beautiful. It’s her smile. “But Ry. You’ve always been mine. You’re my Ryro, always. Just now…my Ryro boyfriend.” He rolls his eyes at the nickname, but just snuggles up closer to her. After that, they don’t say anything. They drift off to sleep with Jon’s stained comforter thrown over them, Dylan’s head resting on Ryan’s chest where she can feel his heartbeat.

In the morning (or a few hours later, whatever), she wakes up with a wonderful view of Ryan’s face just inches from hers. She’s always thought he looked beautiful when he was sleeping – sometimes, it was the only time he looked really peaceful. They had shifted so that they’re facing each other, and he has one arm draped around her back, and the other is curled loosely around her own, near his chest. Also, his morning wood is pressing into her hip. 

For a minute she just remembers everything that happened the night before, reliving every touch, every word. Then she smiles when she realizes that now she can do something about the hard dick straining against his jeans – she’s actually allowed. 

She reaches down between their bodies and carefully, trying not to wake him (because it seems more fun like that) she undoes one button at a time until his cock springs out. She bites her lip as she wraps a hand around him, wanting to moan at the feel of him, hot and heavy and so, so hard. She strokes loosely up and down a few times, rolling her thumb over the head and using the drop of pre-cum to make the slide a little easier. His hips start to move a tiny bit, straining forward into her hand. She rubs little circles under the head, because he had really seemed to like when she pressed her tongue against that spot.

He makes a little whimpering sound that probably shouldn’t be so sexy, and his eyes flutter open a few seconds later. It takes another second for him to be awake enough to register what’s actually happening. 

“Dee, what – ”

She cuts him off with two fingers over his lips, shushing him. “Everyone’s asleep,” she whispers, barely audible, but he nods and his eyes roll back when she strokes harder, twisting her wrist at the end like she remembers him doing that one time. 

He doesn’t last long, maybe a minute, panting and biting his lip, and when she hears the beginning of a low moan, she surges forward and kisses him, swallowing it down. He comes on her hand and all over her skirt, and she thinks, shit.  
He has the same thought a few seconds later. “Oh shit, your skirt. Um, if you wet it and scrub it before it dries, it’ll come clean and you won’t be able to see anything.” She nods and starts to roll away, sitting up. “I’m sorry,” he says before she’s up, sounding incredibly guilty. 

She turns back to him and smiles, kissing him and licking into his mouth for a long minute. When she pulls away, she whispers, “Totally worth it. Be right back.”

He’s right, it comes out, and she breathes a sigh of relief and goes back to lie down on the couch again. Ryan’s already asleep, and she joins him soon, not waking up for another few hours, until some of the people have made a quiet exit and Jon comes down to rouse the few who are left.

They smoke up again, because Bill’s still there with his awesome shit. He keeps shooting them what he probably thinks are covert glances, and after the first joint she can’t take it. 

“What’s up, Bill?” She doesn’t bother to keep the annoyance out of her voice. He’s grinning like an idiot. A really high idiot.

“So,” he starts, innuendo dripping from that one syllable, “What’d you two do last night?”

Ryan looks up at him. “What?” he asks sharply. “What d’you mean?”

“Dude, you were like, feeling each other up in the middle of the party,” Jon chimes in. “And then you disappeared into my room for hours…not to mention the fact that you were half-naked when I found you. Or what you did to my comforter.”

“…It wasn’t hours.”

“Oh, come on. Don’t even try to deny you hooked up. What we want to know is, was it a one-off? Did you just get really drunk? Or have you finally realized you belong together?”

“Bill, you know we don’t drink. And…it wasn’t a one-off. And also, what do you mean ‘finally’?”

“Dylan, man, we’ve been waiting for this all year.”

“Longer,” Jon corrects. “Since I met you guys.”

Ryan and Dylan stare around the room with raised eyebrows. Then at each other.

“We’ve had a pool going about how long it would take before you two jumped each other,” Cassie says, clearly enjoying their surprise. Jon nods.

“What?” Ryan cries.

“How much?” asks Dylan.

“About $150, but it’s gonna be split 3 ways. Spence’s pissed because he just missed it; he bet before the end of freshman year, so he was technically a day off. Apparently he really wanted some new shoes, and he was counting on this money for ‘em.”

Ryan laughs in a dazed sort of way. “Sounds like him.”

“Anyway,” says Bill, “back to the point.” He jumps up out of the chair he’d been lounging in and launches himself at them, pulling them both into a tight, long-limbed hug. “You kids are so damn cute!” 

Jon and Cassie and Gabe and Travie all pile onto them in a crushing group hug. 

After Dylan buys Jon and Cassie breakfast at Denny’s as promised, Jon drops Ryan and Dylan off in front of her house. Dylan’s holding Jon’s comforter awkwardly under one arm. They wave goodbye as he drives off, and then Ryan gives Dylan a deep, sweet kiss before heading back to his own house to check on his dad. He has some laundry and housework to do, but promises to be back over in time for dinner.

She’s still smiling from the kiss when she gets inside. Her mom greets her from the kitchen when she comes in. Grace is probably pretty stoned, judging by the fact that she’s scooping brownie batter out of the empty bowl and licking it off her fingers like a six-year-old. 

Still, she’s perceptive.

“What’s up, Buttercup?” Yep, definitely stoned. “What’s that smile for? That’s not a normal smile. That’s your ‘I have a secret and I can’t wait to tell everyone’ smile.”

Dylan can feel the smile widen and knows that her mom’s dead on. She’s always been good at reading people. And Dylan’s never bothered trying to learn to keep secrets from her.

“I, um. Something happened at the party. Something kind of big.”

Grace giggles. She’s turning fifty in a few months, but she’s still very much in touch with her inner child. It’s one of Dylan’s favorite things about her. “Kind of big, huh? Does it have to do with a boy? And maybe all those hickeys?”

Dylan brings a hand up to her neck and nods slyly, but doesn’t say anything else until her mom pushes her to keep going. Then she says in a rush, “Me and Ryan were dancing and I kissed him and now he’s my boyfriend and oh my god, Grace, I – I’m just so, like – ” She breaks off with a series of wild gestures.

Grace is up and out of the chair before she’s even done talking, and is crushing her in a tight hug, jumping up and down and damn near squealing with schoolgirl giddiness. “Oh honey, I’m so happy for you! Thank god you two finally got your shit together.” 

She plants a kiss on Dylan’s forehead and Dylan is momentarily stunned by the ‘finally’ aspect of what she’s just heard. But when Grace drags her over to sit at the table and just keeps beaming at her, Dylan tells her the whole story (minus the graphic details, of course) while they share brownie batter remnants. By the time they’ve finished talking, the brownies are cooling on top of the stove.

***

Ryan does indeed show up before dinner. Grace answers the door looking uncharacteristically stern. She steps back enough to let him in, but blocks the way up the stairs.

“Hi Grace, how’s – ” He breaks off when he sees her face.

“Dylan, would you please come in here?” Dylan shuffles in from the living room slowly. She looks at her mother, then gives Ryan an apologetic look before staring down at her feet.

“So Ryan, I hear you’ve got intentions with my daughter? That you’re the one who marked her up like a goddam leper?”

“Uhhh, I. Um. Yes?”

“Well, let me tell you, young man. I am very disappointed in the lack of respect you’ve shown her. And that she’s shown toward herself.” She turns to look at Dylan and when Dylan catches her eye, Grace winks. Dylan quickly goes back to staring at her feet to hide her smile.

“It goes without saying that things have changed here. You two are going to be spending a lot less time locked up in her room together. And you’ll be sleeping in the guest room from now on, of course. I’ll be keeping a close eye on both of you. Now, do you have anything to say for yourself?”

Dylan looks up at Ryan under her lashes, trying to keep her face hidden. He’s wide-eyed and the blood’s drained from his face.  
“I – I’m – we – ” he stammers.

“You’re going to have to do a lot better than that, young man.”

Dylan is amazed that Grace has been able to keep a straight face for this long. This is the acting challenge of her life. Dylan herself is trying not to shake too hard with suppressed laughter.

“I – I – didn’t mean – I’m sorry – wasn’t trying to disrespect – I – I – ”

That’s the breaking point. Grace lets out a loud snort and dissolves into a massive fit of giggles, and Dylan joins her, until they’re leaning on each other, clutching their stomachs. 

“Your – face,” Grace gets out between laughs, “you should’ve seen – priceless.”

Ryan is looking from one of them to the other, utter disbelief written across his face. After a minute of staring at the two of them, disbelief melts into relief. 

“You – I can’t believe you – ”

When Grace calms down enough to stand up, she steps forward and envelops Ryan into a smothering hug. She holds on for a long time, and it’s only a moment before he hugs her back, just as tightly.

“I’m sorry, honey, I just couldn’t resist. But really, I’m so happy for you two. I’ve been hoping for years that you would end up together. I just can’t imagine anyone who could make my baby girl as happy as you can. And vice versa.”

He looks over Grace’s shoulder at Dylan and his eyes are shining. She gives him a warm smile, which he returns.

“Thanks, Grace. That means a lot. I really want to make her happy.”

“Ryan dear, you always have.” She squeezes him tightly, one last time, and then holds him out at arm’s length. “And I’m making tofu tacos for dinner, and Caitlyn is bringing over a pepperoni pizza, so we can have both your favorites in celebration of this new…development. And there are triple-fudge, cream cheese brownies for dessert.”

***

After that, things start getting weird. They spend the next hour playing video games before dinner, but Ryan doesn’t start a pillow fight or wrestle with her when he loses, like he usually would. During dinner he doesn’t steal bites of her food or feed her the stringy bits of cheese from his pizza. After they eat, Grace and Caitlyn retire to Grace’s room to get high and finish the remaining brownies, and Ryan and Dylan sit down to watch a Daria marathon. Ryan lies in the bed with Dylan, but doesn’t snuggle up to her or hold her hand or put his head in her lap the way he normally would. She’s hurt and confused and it doesn’t make sense. What makes even less sense is that she’s not trying to initiate any kind of contact either.

After two long, awkward episodes, Dylan can’t take it. She mutes the TV and sits up.

“This is weird. You’re being weird and you’re making me be weird, too. What’s going on?”

He looks half relieved that she brought it up, half nervous to talk about it. “I don’t know. I feel all,” he flails his hands, “awkward and shit. I don’t know how I’m supposed to be.”

“What do you mean? Be how you always are.”

“But. But it’s different now and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

“Different?...Is this about what Grace did earlier?”

“No. Well, maybe, yeah. A little? I don’t know.”

“Can you maybe make that a little more vague?”

“I don’t know, I just. I don’t.”

She tries to keep her tone casual when she asks, “Have you changed your mind? About this? Us?”

His eyes snap up to meet hers, and he starts talking really fast. “No! God, no, Dee. I want this so much. I’ve wanted it for so long, that’s the problem. I’ve been thinking about it for so long, and I never thought – and now it’s this thing. It’s like a really big deal, because it’s you. And Grace was right, this changes everything, our whole relationship, everything’s different now, and I’m afraid – ” He breaks off, biting his lip.

“What?” she asks gently.

“I’m afraid if we lose this, if it doesn’t work, we’ll lose everything. And I really think I would be okay losing a lot of things in my life, but I can’t lose you, DeeDee, I can’t. I wouldn’t know how to like, live without you as my best friend.” He’s breathing shallowly by the time he finishes, almost shaking. She crawls into his lap.

“Ry,” she says softly, “you could never lose me. Best friends forever means forever, no matter what. I’ll always be yours and you’ll always be mine. You couldn’t get rid of me if you tried, honey. I’m here to stay.”

His eyes are swimming. “Promise?”

She holds out her pinkie and he links it with his own. “Promise,” she whispers.

He nods shakily.

“And you know, it’s not really that different. I mean, I still know exactly how to make you do this…” She reaches down to wiggle her fingers just inside his hip bones, and he squeals like a little girl and bucks hard, trying to twist away. She smiles and kisses the tip of his nose, ignoring his glare. “And I’ll always know what this does…” She pulls him in close and he instinctively wraps his arms around her waist. She pets at the hair right at the nape of his neck, scratching lightly over his skin underneath, and he relaxes instantly, melting into her embrace.

“The only thing that’s different, is that now, I also know what this does…” She bends her head to suck on a spot behind his ear that she’d made note of the night before. He shivers and gives a tiny whine, almost like a cat. “And this,” she murmurs, turning his face and capturing his plump lower lip between her teeth, pulling gently. A low groan rumbles up from his chest, and then he’s kissing her, passionate and needy.

And just like that, the weirdness is gone, and they’re right back where they were at the party. She sits on his lap while they make out for a while, and then he pulls her shirt off and kisses messily along her shoulders while he gropes her tits through the thin cotton bra. 

She feels the hardness grow more and more obvious in his tight pants, and she wants. And there’s nothing stopping her now – not like all the other times she’s wanted this – so she whispers in a husky voice, “Let’s see what other reactions I can get out of you.”

She pulls his shirt over his head and pushes him back on the bed, reveling in the look on his face. She kisses across his collarbone, down his chest, and runs the flat of her tongue over his nipple. He sucks in a breath, arches his back and clutches at the sheets. She chuckles darkly.

“See, I’m learning all kinds of new things about you,” she says, before returning her mouth to his nipple. While she kisses and nibbles, licks and sucks, she runs her hands down his sides, feeling each rib slide beneath her fingers, and when she reaches the top of his jeans, she walks her fingers inwards. He shivers as she passes the extremely ticklish place near his hip bones, and then she’s toying with the button in a very teasing manner and moving her mouth down his torso with a trail of wet kisses.

She pulls at the button a little with her teeth, then moves down further and, catching his eye and holding it, she licks a line up his hard cock through the denim. She keeps it up for a couple minutes, teasing him through his pants, and he’s arching up into her mouth, straining to get closer. He keeps his hands to himself after she slaps them away twice when he tries to unbutton his pants.

“God, Dylan, please, just, fuck.”

She inches her hand up from the inside of his thigh, across the wet fabric of his pants, and pops the button. He lifts up so she can slide them down over his hips, and she moves over momentarily to remove them all the way. When she climbs back between his legs, she runs her nails lightly up the underside of his calves. She passes his knees and he moans softly, hips jerking up. Raising an eyebrow, she does it again, with similar result. Interesting. She files it away for future use.

Unlike the night before, he’s wearing underwear this time. They’re dark green boxers with suns and moons all over – a gift from her for his birthday last year. There’s a definite wet spot on the front, right where his cock is tenting them obscenely. She licks at it, tasting the salty precum seeping through. She doesn’t stop, mouthing and licking at him through his boxers until he’s begging and lifting his hips restlessly. Only then does she slide them down his legs, giggling as he kicks them off hastily before going in to wrap her lips around his cock and slide down, little by little.

She’s teased him enough that he can’t last long once she starts sucking him in earnest. She’s a little disappointed when he babbles some sort of barely-coherent warning and comes hot and thick over her tongue. As soon as he’s done, though, he wraps one of his long hands around her shoulder, lifting her toward him, and sits up to meet her halfway.

“I wanna – ” he mumbles, finishing the sentence with a deep kiss, licking into her mouth to chase his taste. They make nearly identical sounds, halfway between a moan and a purr.

“You like that, don’t you?” she pants, when they break apart. He nods and she groans, going for his neck, unable to keep her mouth off his skin, now that she’s finally able to do it.

“I never tried it, before last night, when you kissed me after – yeah…I thought about it before, but it seemed too perverted, I couldn’t bring myself to do it.”

“God, Ry, I wanna know all the perverted stuff you think about. Wanna try it all.”

“Holy shit, yeah, fuck. You, too. I know you’ve got some really fuckin dirty stuff in that pretty little head.”

“Mmm, you have no idea.”

“You’ll have to tell me, then. Or show me.”

“Deal.”

“But first,” he says, pushing her onto her back and making quick work of her shorts, “I want to fuck you, Dee.” She moans loudly in agreement. “But before that, I really, really want to taste your pussy again.” More agreement. 

She helps him get her bra off to hasten the process and then they’re both naked, holy shit, they’re naked together in Dylan’s bed, and Ryan’s kissing down her body, spreading her legs and licking down her slit.

“Shit!” she cries, almost forgetting to keep it down because Grace and her girlfriend are down the hall – probably half-asleep in front of the TV with a haze of pot smoke filling the room, but still.

Ryan laps at her enthusiastically. His tongue is fucking agile and his fingers are long and delicious inside her and she loses it in a matter of minutes. 

“So, I really don’t have to wait to go again?”

“Unhh,” she supplies helpfully. Her brain doesn’t seem to be working too well at the moment. Giving up on any attempts to use words, she just shakes her head.

“Cool,” he says, and goes back in. She nearly screams when his tongue makes contact with her clit again so soon, but he soothes over the sensitized little bud with the flat of his tongue and soon she’s mewling and panting again, burying her hands in his soft hair and stroking his scalp. 

She comes the second time when he sucks her clit between his lips and curls his fingers inside her. She bites her lip hard to keep the noise to a minimum. When she starts to come down, though, she just feels more desperate, needing his cock, wanting to know what it feels like with more than his fingers inside her. She goes from no thoughts to one thought: getting Ryan to a more convenient position to make that happen. She pulls at him, and he scrambles up the bed to lie on top of her.

“So,” he says, a little breathless, “we’re really doing this?”

Dylan nods quickly. “As long as, um, you still want to.” She tries really hard to keep it from coming out like a question.

“Are you kidding? Fuck, I’ve been dreaming about this for so long, Dee. Like, literally dreaming about it.”

“Yeah?” She smiles, nipping at his lip.

“Yeah…really hot dreams that usually end with me having to change my boxers.”

“Mmm. I’d like to hear about those dreams.” Something occurred to her. “Hey, that time when you, you know, when you were asleep and like, came on me. Were you dreaming about me?”

He grins lopsidedly. “Yeah, I remember that one. It was really good. Especially the end.”

“What was it about? The dream?”

He lowers his lips to her ear, and she shivers at both the feel of his breath and the impact of his words. “I was fucking you. In this bed…and speaking of which…” He rocks his hips, trailing precum up the inside of her thigh, oh so close to her very wet pussy. She presses up into him, answering the unasked question. Yes, she’s more than ready.

He pulls back a little, looking suddenly, inexplicably, adorably bashful. “I, uh. I brought, um. In case you wanted – I mean, I know you’re allergic and all, but it just seemed kind of, I don’t know. Presumptuous to just not bring any. And there’s the natural kind or whatever, but somehow I thought you might actually kick my ass out if I bought lambskin anything, and kicking me out would kind of defeat the purpose…so.” She smiles at his nervous rambling. 

“You brought condoms to be polite?” He knows – of course he knows – that she’s been on the pill for a year now, that she’s terribly allergic to latex, and that they’re both obviously clean since, hello, virgins. But he brought condoms because it seemed like the right thing to do. It’s unbearably sweet and silly and charming and. It’s just such a Ryan thing to do. She just shakes her head and kisses him until he forgets to be embarrassed.

“I appreciate the gesture, Ry, but yeah, let’s just skip it.”

“Awesome.” He kisses her again, and when their eyes meet he says, “So, are you ready?”

“Yeah.” She’s nervous, undeniably so, but definitely ready.

There’s a sharp spark of pain when he pushes in, and a weird sense of being stretched from the inside – which she supposes makes sense, but it’s still a weird sensation. His voice strained and uneven, he asks if she’s okay, if he can move. He feels her nod with his face buried in her neck, panting into her skin. He’s shaking all over, hardly breathing. He pulls out just a little, pushes back in, and yeah it hurts – he’s so big, god, it feels like too much – but the slide is pretty amazing, the feeling of him moving inside her, Jesus.

“Holy fuck, you’re so – I didn’t think it’d be this – oh my god, this intense. Fuck, Dee, I can’t, I can’t,” he pants in her ear as he thrusts in unevenly. Then, a second later, “Oh shit, oh shit, Dee, I’m sorry, I’m gonna,” and he pushes in hard, buries himself deep, and moans, long and low, as he comes. 

It still hurts, she hasn’t even gotten used to it yet, but then it’s over, he’s collapsing on top of her, pulling out and rolling onto his back, and she just feels empty. She wants his warmth back, his weight on top of her.

“Oh my god. Oh god, Dee, I’m sorry, fuck, I’m so fucking sorry.” He sounds absolutely miserable, which is so not the way she imagined him sounding after they had sex.

“Ry, it’s okay.”

“No it’s not! Oh god, that was terrible. That was like, the worst thing that could have happened.”

“It really wasn’t that bad, Ry.”

But he’s not even listening to her anymore. He’s in total freak-out mode. “Oh my god, I’m horrible. I’m horrible at sex.” 

“Ry.”

“I can’t even – I’m like, a total cliché. I’m – ”

“Ry.”

“Jesus, you’re totally going to break up with me, and go out with someone who’s actually good at sex and can last more than three seconds.”

“Ryan.”

He looks at her with big, slightly pathetic eyes. “What? Are you breaking up with me?”

“No, dumbass. I’m trying to stop you freaking out. It’s seriously not a big deal.”

“Come on, Dylan. Is that how you pictured losing your virginity?”

“Well, no, but. It’s you, and it’s us, and that’s the thing that actually matters to me. That’s the part I’m going to remember in ten years. The details aren’t really important.”

She’s watching him carefully for a reaction. It’s not immediate, but after a minute he starts to visibly relax. His expression grows soft and thoughtful, and then he leans over and kisses her. It’s soft and sweet, and her stomach does that same fluttery-swoop thing that it did the first time he ever kissed her.

“And also,” she adds when he pulls back to look at her again, “it helps that we can do it again as soon as you’re ready.”

“What?”

“Well, it’s not like we’re in the backseat of someone’s car and have to be home before curfew, or we snuck off to a dark room and have to hurry up before someone catches us. We’ve got all night. And tomorrow, and the whole summer. And after that, too. We’ve got as long as we want. I mean, until one of us gets tired of the other one.” She can’t help adding that last part, voicing a concern that she’s had since all of this started. What she really means is until you get tired of me, because she’s sure that she’ll always want this, but she’s afraid he won’t.

He smiles softly, and his eyes are warm and sincere. “DeeDee, I could never get tired of you. I mean, it’s you…It’s always been you,” he adds quietly.

She smiles broadly, suddenly very aware of the pleasant ache in her heart. “Then we have forever.” She kisses him again, and after a minute it deepens, shifts. When she pulls back, her smile has shifted, too. “Starting with tonight. And you know what? I think it’ll get better every time.”

“Yeah?” He sounds hopeful, and she bites back another grin, nodding instead.

“And right now, there’s something I want to try, but I feel kinda embarrassed asking, because it might be weird. I’m not really sure. I’ve never done any of this stuff, and I haven’t exactly watched a lot of porn, so I don’t really know what’s weird. But I kinda think I want to do some weird stuff.”

“I’m totally down with weird stuff. What do you want?”

“Um. I mean, I know you’re not…” she gestures down to his dick, which isn’t exactly hard, “right now, but I want to taste…um. I want to taste me on you. Like, I like the way I taste, and I really like the way you taste, and I wanna see how we taste together. After you…you know. Came inside me.”

His eyebrows shoot up. “Jesus.”

She bites her lip. “Too weird?”

He shakes his head. “Fuck, that’s so hot.”

Her lips quirk up in a little half-smile, and she slides down his body, pushing him onto his back again. She licks around his dick, which starts to stir almost immediately, and then goes for his balls. He cries out, tensing all over, and his hands go down into her hair, using it as an anchor. She spends a little time down there, since he really seems to like it, and by the time she gets around to cleaning off his dick, he’s completely hard again.

Instead of sucking him, though, when she’s done, she moves back up the bed, straddling his hips. “I was right, it’s awesome. Wanna taste?” He doesn’t hesitate before nodding enthusiastically, and kisses her hot and dirty, licking deep into her mouth. He starts to sit up and push her over, rolling them.

“Uh-uh,” she says, putting both hands on his shoulders and pushing him back down to the bed. She leans over and kisses him again, and reaches back to wrap one hand around his hard cock. She lifts her body and lines him up, then starts to sink down onto him. 

“Oh, god,” he moans, and she echoes the sentiment. It doesn’t hurt as much this time, though it’s still a lot to take, and she has the sneaking suspicion that she’s going to be pretty sore every time they do this, at least for a while. The thought makes her smile.

He holds onto her hips when she starts to move, and she was totally right, it does get better every time. A lot fucking better. She comes while she’s riding him, looking straight into his eyes and trying to bite back her loud cry. Then he flips them over and fucks her the way they first did, and he doesn’t last all that long after that; he comes when she loses it again, her pussy clamping down on his cock enough to pull his orgasm from him. He kisses her hard and they swallow each other’s screams.

When they’ve recovered, he asks if that can count for their first time, and she agrees, laughing.

The third time is even better. She wakes up to him spooned behind her (a frequent occurrence), and he’s got his arm wrapped around her hip, his long fingers sliding slickly over her clit, dipping inside her. He’s hard and thrusting against her ass, and as soon as she’s fully awake, she pushes back against him and spreads her legs so he can push inside and take her from behind. It’s slow and gentle, and all kinds of wonderful. He keeps rubbing her clit and she comes in under two minutes. While she’s still panting, her skin buzzing with the afterglow, he pushes her over and up onto her knees and then he’s inside her again and she moans happily at the intrusion, even though she’s already sore. He fucks her fast and hard this time, practically slamming into her while she slides a hand down between her legs and lets out a string of groans and half-formed words of encouragement that she tries to keep quiet so she doesn’t wake up Grace or her girlfriend. He babbles broken curses and endearments, interspersed with her name (which she now knows really was what she heard him saying in the bathroom that first time) until his thrusts lose focus and then he’s going impossibly faster and they’re both coming hard.

After, he collapses on top of her, pinning her to the bed and she thinks it would probably be really uncomfortable if he weighed more than like eighty pounds. When he has the strength and presence of mind, he rolls off, and they just stare at each other for a long time. He looks peaceful and completely happy, and she can totally relate to both of those things.

“So you were right, it’s definitely better.”

“Told you so. Don’t know why you didn’t listen. You know I’m always right.”

“Yeah, yeah. Except when it comes to movies, because Return of the Jedi is totally better than The Empire Strikes Back.”

“In your dreams!”

They argue for a while, and it feels the exact same as always except for the pleasant ache between Dylan’s legs. Then they shower (together), and eat cold pizza while they watch all three Star Wars movies back to back…at least that’s the plan, but really they fall asleep half an hour into Empire and wake up to the title screen playing the theme music on repeat two hours later.

Caitlyn makes Belgian waffles and vegan sausages for breakfast, and they spend the morning lounging by the pool. Spencer comes over to practice later and nothing’s changed but everything’s so much better.

***

They keep practicing and Dylan gets better on bass and they all get better together. Ryan starts picking lyrics out of the things he’s always writing in his journals, and Dylan puts them to music, and a year later they’re practicing a couple songs of their own in addition to My Chem and Green Day and Blink 182. Dylan thinks they’re actually pretty good songs.

A boy named Brendon comes to their school at the beginning of Junior year and within like, a week he’s Spencer’s new best friend – Spencer didn’t really have an old best friend, aside from Dylan and Ryan. When they start hanging out together, Dylan falls instantly in love with him, the way she did with Spencer and Jon (who still keeps in touch, even though he moved to Chicago for college and has a new band that’s actually going on tour soon). Brendon’s hyper and dorky and absolutely adorable. He also turns out to be a musical genius who plays like twelve instruments and can sing better than anyone Dylan’s ever met.

By the end of that year, they’ve got half a dozen songs that Ryan and Dylan made, and Grace chips in and gets them some time in a recording studio. Ryan puts their music up on PureVolume, and they actually get some pretty positive responses. People like them! 

Toward the beginning of senior year, Ryan finally works up the nerve to send their songs to Pete Wentz. For the last two years, Pete Wentz has been Ryan’s idol, the symbol for everything he wants in life, and (though he denied it for over a year) the first and only dude he totally wants to bang. (The truth of it finally came out one night when she had him on his hands and knees working three fingers in and out of his ass, whispering all the dirty things she wanted to do to him, and he came without her touching his dick when she said she’d love to watch him get fucked by Pete Wentz. After that, he stopped denying it – at least, to her.)

To everyone’s surprise, Pete fucking Wentz replies, and not only that, he says he likes their sound and wants to come down to Vegas to hear them play. Afterwards, he tells them over tacos that he wants to sign them. Ryan nearly passes out on the spot.

The four of them go up to Maryland to record their album (their fucking album!) during the last month of high school. Brendon’s parents had been a bitch to convince, and George had beat the shit out of Ryan when he finally worked up the nerve to ask. After Grace had relocated his shoulder and decided that he did not, after all, have a concussion, she and Dylan went back with Ryan. Ryan told George that he would go to the cops and tell them the whole story, everything he had done over the past ten years, and he was wearing the proof on his body. If the cops came right then, there was no time for George to sober up, to clean Ryan’s blood off the stairs or mend his split knuckles, and George knew he was screwed. He signed the document on the spot, saying that Ryan could complete high school via correspondence. Grace and Dylan had stayed to look after Ryan while he quickly packed two big duffel bags of clothes, CDs, journals, and all the other things he would need. He didn’t plan to come back for a long time.

In Maryland, things are tough. Everyone’s overworked and not sleeping enough, and they start fighting, all of them. Dylan worries that maybe they won’t make it through this, that it could be the end of the band or her and Ryan or both. She cries herself to sleep more than once.

Their last night there, before they leave for the long drive home, they spend twelve hours in the studio polishing everything.  
When they get back to their little apartment, fighting over who gets first shower, Ryan disappears into the bedroom – which everyone had quickly decided he and Dylan should get, after Spence and Brendon walked in on her blowing him in the kitchen – and slams the door. Dylan, Spence, and Brendon smoke up, two at a time while the other showers, and they’re playing cards at the cheap little table when Ryan finally emerges, grabs a bag from the freezer and disappears again. Everyone looks at each other, silently expressing wonder at the levels of weirdness that Ryan Ross is capable of. Almost immediately he’s back, and this time he takes Dylan by the hand (ignoring her protests and curses) and leads her to the bedroom door. 

Inside, it smells like orange blossoms, vanilla and sandalwood, the same weird combination as the organic shampoo Grace used to buy, which Dylan hasn’t smelled in years. Ryan’s draped one of his scarves over the lamp on the bedside table, so everything looks dark and mottled from the paisley print. The floor and bed are littered with dandelion petals – Dylan’s favorite flower – and there’s a little heart on the pillow made of guitar picks. When she wanders over to look closer, she realizes they’re all familiar – some are from concerts she and Ryan have seen together over the years, some are the kind they used to practice with, back when they started playing guitar, and some are the same ones they’ve been using in the studio. Inside the heart is an ice cream cone, set inside a bowl. It’s strawberry, their favorite.

She looks at him questioningly. He shrugs, and even in the low light she can see that he’s blushing. “I just thought,” he mumbles, “that we should do something nice together. We’ve all been fighting so much, and I know a lot of it’s my fault, and. I’m sorry.”

A smile spreads across her face and she hugs him, tight, and lays sweet kisses on his mouth. Before it can heat up too much, though, he pushes her back gently. “Don’t let the ice cream melt.”

They sit on the bed together and share the ice cream. He’s fidgety and doesn’t talk much, but he keeps saying “nothing” when she asks what’s wrong and why he’s being weird. When she gets to the last of the ice cream and takes the first bite of the cone, the fidgeting gets worse. It’s kind of annoying.

“What?” 

“It’s nothing,” he says again, quickly. “Finish it.”

Rolling her eyes, she takes another bite. And another. And then she sees something, inside the cone. Something…green?

It’s another guitar pick. Upon examination, it turns out to be from the first concert they ever went to together, signed by one of the guys from Hootie and the Blowfish (shut up, okay, they were like eleven). She turns it over and on the other side, in purple Sharpie, is Ryan’s tiny handwriting. It says, will you marry me? 

Her mouth drops open and her eyes are like saucers when she looks up at him. He meets her eyes, looking equal parts terrified and determined, and he’s holding a ring. It’s silver with a little moonstone – her birthstone – cut in the shape of a heart. She looks from the ring back up to his face. He’s biting his lip and the blush is back on his cheeks.

“It’s not – I mean, it’s not much, I wanted to wait until I could afford a real ring, if the record sells. But then I thought, you know, I can buy the ring later, and I want to marry you no matter what happens with the stupid record, so. I mean. God, DeeDee, it’s always been you. It’s always gonna be you…So um, what do you think?”

A glow starts in her belly and spreads quickly outwards until it feels like her fingers and toes and her fucking hair are radiating this crazy happiness. The smile lighting up her face is probably enough answer for him, but it’s Ryan, and he can be really stupid sometimes, and really insecure, so for good measure she kisses him, hard, and whispers, “Yes,” against his lips, over and over, between kisses.  
  
***  
  
The album turns out to be really good, and people actually like it. A lot. Their first tour is insane, absolutely perfect – in a really dirty, exhausting, overwhelming kind of way. They hang out with rock stars and play to thousands of people and do interviews with Kerrang and Rolling Stone. Ryan and Dylan are everybody’s favorite couple – tabloids want pictures of them together and radio deejays want interviews and everyone wants to hear their story.

They get married backstage at the venue before the last show of the Nintendo Fusion Tour, just a couple months after they turn 18. Grace flies in with Caitlyn, who performs the ceremony. All the members of all the bands on the tour are there, along with roadies and techs and bodyguards. They all clap and shout and hoist Dylan and Ryan (and a very surprised Grace) into the air and carry them around, laughing, until the first bands have to go on stage. 

At the show, they announce their marriage and Pete manages to get the pictures he took on his cell phone to display on the Jumbo Tron. The crowd goes wild, even more so when Ryan comes over and kisses Dylan, hot and deep, before they start playing.

It’s their best show yet.


End file.
